


Risen

by imogenbynight



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Monsters, Coffeeshop AU, F/F, Fem!Castiel, Pastry Chef AU, fem!dean, fem!destiel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-01-12 11:38:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imogenbynight/pseuds/imogenbynight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she hangs the help wanted sign in the front window of her cafe, the last thing Deanna expects is to end up employing an inexperienced, socially inept ex-actuary as her new pastry cook.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Help Wanted

**Author's Note:**

> In November, my dear friend [sherryandgin](http://sherryandgin.tumblr.com/) over on tumblr made a post lamenting the severe lack of fem!destiel coffeeshop AU's, and I stupidly told her I'd write a thing. That thing was going to be a tiny fluffy ficlet of 500ish words. That thing did not happen.
> 
> This, on the other hand, did.
> 
> Dean and Cas are the only characters whose sex and gender have been altered, and the only other difference (besides the lack of monsters) is that John is dead while Mary is alive. Because of reasons. 
> 
> I hope you guys like it!

The streets are quiet and empty, and for the fifteen minutes it takes to walk from her apartment to the cafe, there's no sound but the click of Deanna's boot heels on the pavement.

With a sniff, she wipes the misty damp from her nose and tucks her hands more firmly under her arms. Even her three layers of t-shirt, button-down and a time-worn leather jacket aren't enough to warm her bones this early.

A few blocks ahead, a gray sedan moves in and out of view as it crosses the intersection, kicking up day old rain. It's the only sign of life she's seen since she stepped outside, and before the thought of how early it is can further sour her mood she reminds herself that if she actually gets everything done this morning, she'll be free for the next two days. The promise of an entire Friday and Saturday with no paperwork, and more importantly no stress from putting it off, is enough to make her pick up her pace. Despite having left home a little later than she'd planned, it's only twenty to four in the morning when she steps into the alley behind the cafe.

There are a couple of cats—or quite possibly, their disease riddled, long-whiskered nemeses—scurrying around in the dumpster that's pressed against the opposite wall. With cold fingers she fumbles her keys from her pocket, desperate to get inside and away from anything capable of giving her the plague.

It's a reasonable fear, she thinks.

The one history class she remembers from her largely forgettable high school career had involved an overview of disease outbreaks, and she distinctly remembers that they closed down the Seattle Underground in 1907, just in case. The way she sees it, it's entirely possible that something nasty has been breeding down there, only to re-emerge in her back alley a century later, armed with some kind of... super plague. She shudders at the thought.

As the door clicks shut behind her, effectively saving her from the germ machines in the alley, she hits the stockroom light switch with her elbow. The fluorescent glare makes her wince, and she blinks until her eyes adjust before heading into the office to shuck off her jacket and toss her keys on the desk. There's a stack of paperwork there, left behind from yesterday, and the day before, and the day before. She glares at it for a full thirty seconds before muttering, “Too fucking early,” under her breath.

If she could, she'd kick her bosses ass. Sadly, her leg won't bend that far backward.

Early mornings and paperwork are the only things she hates about running her own cafe, and considering that she's here an hour earlier than usual to go over the books, today is already shaping up to be the worst day of her week.

Gathering everything into her arms, she makes her way through the kitchen, pushing the swinging door with her hip as she carries the books out into the front of the cafe. Here, the lights are dimmer, the seating more comfortable. The calmer environment won't make what she has to do fun, but it'll help. She leaves everything on one of the low tables while she starts up the espresso machine.

When her mug is full and steaming she reaches beneath the counter to switch on the stereo. She figures the music will keep her sane while she works, and failing that, it'll at least keep her awake until her fellow pastry chef, Benny, arrives at five o'clock. Once the two of them get started on preparing the days pastries, she'll be awake enough to lose the uneasy feeling in her gut. That's the plan, anyway.

The paperwork is taunting her, though, and she can't shake off the thought that she's only going to feel worse once she's done it. That's why she's been putting it off all week; she knows full well that she's not going to like what she sees.

The chilled glass case at the counter shows what remains from the previous day, and the rows of tarts and pies and cupcakes are largely untouched. It's been like that every day for months. The rats— _cats_ , she tells herself firmly, _definitely cats_ —in the dumpster out back must think it's fucking Christmas, because she's been forced to throw out more and more. They're not selling nearly enough.

For a long few minutes Deanna stares at the cakes and thinks about rats and puts off the paperwork for a little longer.

Funnily enough, the sound of Black Sabbath playing _Paranoid_ is doing nothing to settle her nerves, and she puts her mug down by the books before switching the stereo back off. The silence is almost as unpleasant.

Unable to delay any longer, Deanna sinks down into one of the armchairs by the table and flips through the first few pages, chewing absently on her pen as she goes. It doesn't take long for her to confirm that the money situation is dire, and when she's done, she slumps back against the cushions with the heels of her palms pressed to her eyes.

Humble Pie and Cake Co. isn't exactly in a great location, and despite the food being nothing short of delicious, nobody seems to notice it exists. For a while business had been good—if not exactly busy, then at least consistent enough to keep them scraping by—but seven months ago a fire tore through the nearest shopping district, and the reduction in foot traffic has been more than noticeable, even without the figures in front of her.

So she knew it was bad. She just didn't know it was _this_ bad.

Because now, Deanna can tell that Humble is, for lack of a better term, fucked. If business doesn't pick up in the next few months, she's going to have no choice but to close down.

The thought makes her stomach churn.

 

* * *

 

She's still slouched in the armchair at five, her head in her hands, when the sound of footsteps in the back room startles her to alertness.

“You here, Dee?”

Benny's voice echoes out of the kitchen a moment before he appears in the doorway, filling the whole frame with his wide shoulders. He may be rough around the edges and the size of a mountain, but damn can he make a good shortcrust. His navy wool coat is flecked with rain, and paired with his thick stubble and flat cap, he tends to give off the air of an old sea captain.

“Ahoy,” she says, and he rolls his eyes, pulling the cap from his head.

“You know, since you started that crap the girls won't stop callin' me Cap'n Daddy.”

Deanna snorts out a laugh at the thought, but her heart isn't in it. The reminder that Benny's twin daughters need their dad to earn a decent paycheck is enough to dampen any humor she finds in his outfit. Looking from her glum expression to the papers spread out before her, Benny frowns.

“Well,” he says, dumping his cell phone on the counter, “that don't look like anything good.”

“You got that right.”

Making his way over, Benny turns his head sideways to look at the figures scratched over Deanna's notepad. He doesn't read long before she hears him push out a long breath.

“So I take it we're about as screwed as we thought.”

“Worse.”

With a nod, Benny roughly runs a hand down over his chin.

“Alright,” he says finally, clapping her firmly on the shoulder, “then we'll figure it out.”

He says it with no room for argument, and Deanna looks up at him in gratitude.

When she first met Benny back in freshman year of culinary school, Deanna had been a little intimidated. She'd known guys who looked like him before, and they'd all tended toward the kind of aggressive macho posturing that instantly set her on edge, her fight-or-flight response in stand by at all times. But when they were paired up for an assignment in their international cuisine class she saw how good a cook he was. After that, it only took him telling her about his wife Andrea to figure out that he was actually a giant softie. The guy honest to God called her his boo.

Deanna, loathe as she is to admit it, has a soft spot for romantics, and soon enough she'd found herself considering him one of her closest friends. Now, five years—and a set of twins who call her Aunty Dee—later, he's the only person she trusts to do things right in her kitchen.

She hates the thought that if Humble goes under he's going to end up out of work, too.

“I don't know what to do,” she tells him, staring uselessly at the pages.

“Well for now,” Benny says, “I say we get our asses in there and make some fuckin' pie.”

With that, he turns and heads back into the kitchen, stopping on his way to turn the stereo on loud, and Deanna cracks a smile. Pushing to her feet, she follows, grateful for the distraction that baking will bring.

If there's a better smell than freshly baked pie crust, Deanna doesn't know about it. There's just something about it that says comfort. On a day like today, that's exactly what she needs.

As Benny fires up the ovens and pulls out the ingredients for their first batch of pastry, Deanna ties her short hair back with an elastic.

To call her kitchen small would be a gross understatement. It's cramped, ancient, and though it carries a certain nostalgic charm, she's certain that an upgrade would solve a lot of problems. But an upgrade costs money, and as the books made very clear, they've barely made enough to scrape together rent and wages in the past few months.

“Move your ass, Benny,” she says, lightly shoving his broad shoulders, “gotta get to the fridge.”

“That ain't no way to talk to an employee,” Benny tells her, but he squeezes up against the counter all the same.

“So who's on today?” he asks after a few minutes, handing over the apron Deanna was about to ask for, and she thinks while she slips it on.

“What is it, Thursday?”

“All day long,” Benny tells her, tipping flour into a sieve, and she rolls her eyes.

“Kevin's in at quarter to eight, but he's got a test at two thirty,” she explains, pulling her best knife from the block and getting started on a stack of apples for pie filling, “so I'm sticking around to close up.”

As he hits the side of the sieve with the heel of his palm, Benny looks over at her in question. The part time barista is halfway through a dual degree in political science and IT, and he's been dropping shifts like flies lately. More often than not, Deanna is picking up the slack, and it isn't the first time Benny has given her this look like he thinks she's pushing herself too hard.

“Jo couldn't cover? Or Pam?”

“Jo's not getting back from Portland until tonight,” Deanna tells him, “and Pam had an appointment.”

“So you're working, what—twelve, thirteen hours?”

Shrugging, Deanna scrapes the cubed apple into a bowl and tosses in some brown sugar, sprinkling it with cinnamon.

“Don't have much choice.”

Benny shakes his head.

“We need another part timer.”

“Do I need to show you the books again?”

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you,” he says, waving her off with a floury hand, “but I was, uh...”

“Mm?”

“You know I hate leaving the girls in daycare all the time, and since Andrea got that promotion they've been there almost every day. So I was thinking of cutting my shifts down. Maybe go from five days to three?”

“Oh.”

“And I figure, if I'm working less hours and we get a part timer who can help you out in here as well as picking up the hours Kevin can't work out front, it won't hurt the budget.”

“Yeah... I guess.”

She might own the business, but Benny's been by her side since the start. The thought of sharing the kitchen with someone else, especially when things are so unsteady, really doesn't sit well.

“You don't sound convinced.”

“No, I mean, I get it. You want to spend time with your kids. Who wouldn't? And you're right... Kevin only wants one or two shifts a week now. It could work.”

“Well alright,” Benny says, sticking his hands into the mixing bowl and scooping out the dough, “here's hoping we can find someone good.”

A few hours later when the morning's preparation is done, Deanna slips off her apron, hanging it on the hook by the door before she makes her way out into the cafe. She switches the music to something a little quieter, unlocks the door, flips the sign to OPEN, and settles at the counter with the books to go over the numbers again. After double checking everything, she thinks Benny's suggestion will work.

Between the two shifts he's dropping, and the reduction in hours that Kevin has been hinting at, there's enough room for another part timer without having to spend more.

Benny's out back, waiting to take a batch of single serve cherry pies from the oven, and when Kevin arrives half an hour late, breathless and pink-cheeked from running, Deanna looks up from the counter.

“Morning,” she tells him, and he shakes the misty rain from his hair, panting as he pulls off his backpack to shove into the cubby under the counter.

“Sorry, sorry. Traffic sucks today.”

“It's fine,” Deanna says, “nobody's been in yet.”

Pushing his hair back, Kevin takes a moment to catch his breath.

“So,” she says, figuring there's no point beating around the bush, “you want less hours, right?”

“What?” Kevin says, his face dropping, “is this because I was late?”

Deanna pulls a face.

“You said last week that your classes are getting intense,” she reminds him, and he visibly relaxes.

“Right. Yeah,” he says, “but you said nobody could cover my shifts.“

Flipping her notepad open to a blank page, Deanna clicks the top of her pen.

“New plan.”

* * *

The morning passes quietly.

Between eight and eleven, they have a grand total of nine customers. There's one regular, a red-headed tech support worker named Charlie, who chats to Deanna about the latest episode of The Walking Dead for ten minutes before she buys a whole tray of cupcakes and eight varieties of liquid caffeine, but the rest of them are an assortment of single cup orders who don't even look at the display case.

When Benny leaves to pick up his daughters from daycare at noon, pulling his cap back down on his head and giving a half wave on his way out the door, Deanna sets to work on writing up a help wanted sign.

Kevin takes one look at it over her shoulder, scrunches up his face, and holds out a hand.

“What?” Deanna asks.

“Let me type it up and print it. Your handwriting is terrible.”

With a frown, Deanna hands it over, and when Kevin comes back from the office with an entirely reworded version of the sign, printed in bold font, she looks it over with narrowed eyes.

“This isn't what I wrote.”

“It's the same information,” Kevin says, “just...”

He trails off, and she raises her eyebrow at him.

“More concise,” he says diplomatically, “Just hang it in the window.”

“Sure thing, boss,” she tells him with a mock salute, and he snorts, making his way back to the counter.

Looking it over, she carries the sheet of paper to the window and sticks it firmly to the glass.

Kevin leaves at two, and for the next hour, Deanna sits at the counter. Nobody comes in. She texts her brother, who is in class and doesn't reply, and polishes the display case twice before giving up and heading into the back room to find something to else occupy herself with.

Typically, it's as soon as she's on her hands and knees, searching under the desk for the pen she just knocked off it, when the bell over the door rings. When she makes her way back out through the kitchen, Deanna sees a woman in a pantsuit and a tan overcoat, standing stiffly by the door. Her dark hair is unkempt from the wind outside, her cheeks flushed pink from the cold, yet despite her disheveled appearance everything about her says _all work no play_. Her mouth is tight at the edges, her sharp blue eyes narrowed and steely.

Deanna thinks she might be pretty if she would only stop frowning.

“Hi there,” Deanna says with a smile, hoping for one in return. No dice.The woman just looks at her, tilts her head slightly in greeting, and dumps her thoroughly inside-out umbrella in the trashcan by the door. When she finally comes to stand in front of the counter, Deanna waits for her to say something. She doesn't.

“What can I get you?” she prompts, and the woman blinks at her.

“Espresso machiatto,” she says after a moment.

She's got a voice like a young Stevie Nicks—low and raspy—and Deanna thinks it's a shame she's got the social skills of a cactus, because that's the kind of voice she could listen to all day long.

“Here, or to go?” Deanna asks, and the woman casts a glance to the worsening rain outside. She sighs.

“I'll have it here.”

She hands over the exact change, leaves a tip in the jar, and settles down at the table closest to the door to wait. It's as Deanna carries over her coffee that she notices the open cake box on the table. Three intricately decorated cupcakes sit inside, and with thoughts of how awful business has been lately still at the forefront of her mind, the sight of this woman eating some frilly cakes in her cafe pisses her right off. Her grip tightens on the saucer.

“Hey, come on,” she says, gesturing toward the cake with her free hand, “you can't eat food from some other cafe.”

The woman looks up at her with confusion, as though the thought that it might be frowned upon never even occurred to her, and then back down at the cakes in question.

“These are homemade,” she says, as if that makes a difference, and... well. _Huh_ , Deanna thinks.

“ _You_ made these?”

“Yes.”

“You.”

“Was I unclear?”

The words should sound sarcastic, but somehow Deanna gets the impression that the question is sincere.

“No, it's just... you're like...” she gestures vaguely toward the woman, to the briefcase leaning by her feet, the no-nonsense suit she's wearing, “an accountant or something.”

The woman's eyes narrow, and Deanna feels a little like she's being hit with a death ray. And then she feels like a jerk, because she knows she's been on the other side of comments like that—nobody ever believes she's a pastry chef.

They take one look at her short hair and her tattooed arms and her plaid shirts and they file her away as _one of the boys_ , someone who's interested in cars and women and off color jokes. And yeah, she loves all three—especially if she can find a way to combine them—but there's more to her than that. She's got layers, thank you very much, and one of those layers happens to be a passion for all things pastry.

She started baking when she was seventeen, the year after her dad died.

Her mom was just barely holding it together, though she put on a brave face for Deanna and her little brother Sam, and somehow the process of teaching Deanna to knead dough and melt chocolate and stew fruit seemed to make it all a little easier. It didn't take long for Deanna to learn, and soon enough she was cooking for her mom, and for Sam, and when all was said and done, she cooked for herself. Making things that made the people around her feel good made _her_ feel good, and what started as a coping mechanism grew into a passion, and then, eventually, a business.

Over the years, though, she's encountered more than enough judgmental douchebags who decide with a single glance that she's not feminine enough-whatever the fuck that means—and because of that she couldn't _possibly_ be a pastry chef. Now, here she is, doing the exact same thing to some random woman. She clears her throat.

“Sorry.”

“Actuary,” the woman says after a moment, and Deanna has absolutely no idea what she's talking about.

“What?”

“I'm not an accountant.,” she clarifies, “I'm an actuary.”

It takes a couple of seconds for Deanna to remember what that even is, and when she does she frowns.

“That's to do with insurance, right?”

“Yes. Though I suppose it would be more accurate to say ex-actuary, now,” she goes on, distracted, before turning back to Deanna, “at any rate, I'll refrain from eating here. Could you make the coffee to go?”

Looking down at the coffee in her hand, Deanna nods, but doesn't move to walk away. Maybe it's just the fact that she's been bored for the past hour, or that this woman's voice would sound good reading the phone book, but there's something that's making her want to keep talking to her. The woman closes the lid of the cake box, preparing to slide it back into the bag it came out of, when she notices Deanna still standing there.

“Is there something else?” she asks, jolting Deanna out of her thoughts.

“Yeah,” she says, then shakes her head, “no. I mean... you said _ex_ -actuary?”

The woman considers her for a moment, clearly wondering why on earth Deanna is even asking. Her gaze drops to the floor when she answers.

“I was let go today.”

“Shit, that sucks,” Deanna says, and the woman huffs, raising her brow.

“I thought much the same thing.”

“Were you there long?”

“Nine years.”

“Shit,” Deanna repeats, and the woman looks up at her seriously.

“That's been established.”

Deanna shakes her head.

“Rough day,” she says, and when her eyes fall on the box again she can't help but ask, “what's with the cake, anyway?”

As if she'd forgotten it was there, the woman looks down at it, flicking idly at a rough edge on the cardboard.

“It's my birthday,” she says, “I left most with the reception staff, but I spent a long time making them, so—”

Deanna cuts her off, sinking into the seat opposite her and putting down the coffee.

“You got _fired_ ,” she says, “from somewhere you worked almost a _decade_. On your _birthday_?”

“It seems so.”

“Did they know?”

“Who?”

“The assholes who fired you.”

“Oh. Yes, he... he definitely knew.”

Deanna looks at her a long moment before glancing around the empty cafe and outside at the pouring rain.

“You know what?” she says, pushing the coffee across the table toward her, “eat your cake. I'm not gonna add to your shitty day.”

“Thank you.”

“Don't mention it.”

The look the woman gives her isn't quite a smile, but it could be in the right light, and Deanna nods at her once before rising, making her way back to the espresso machine to make a cup for herself. As she froths the milk, steam billowing up in a hazy cloud, she sees the woman swipe her finger through one of the cupcakes, licking the frosting from her index finger. Deanna looks away.

She's pouring the milk when she sees movement out of the corner of her eye, and when she turns the woman is standing at the counter. How she managed to miss every creaky floorboard is a fucking mystery.

“You're hiring,” she says flatly.

“What?”

The woman gestures toward the paper stuck to the front window, and Deanna looks at it briefly before putting her mug down on the counter.

“Uh, yeah,” she says, and the woman nods as if that settles something.

“I'll bring my resume in tomorrow.”

Her voice is flat and humorless, but as she watches her make her way back to her seat, Deanna snorts, assuming it's a joke. The woman, sinking back into her seat, looks over with a frown.

“Did you even read the ad?” Deanna asks, walking around the counter, and the woman's frown deepens.

“Yes.”

“Look, I don't wanna be rude or whatever,” she says, coming to a stop by the table, “but I'm guessing you were earning a lot more than minimum wage at your old job.”

The woman nods up at her.

“So...” Deanna goes on, “wouldn't this be kind of a massive downgrade?”

“No.”

“You're actually serious.”

“Yes.”

 _Huh_ , Deanna thinks, and sits down in the seat across from her.

“What's your name?”

“Castiel Novak.”

 _Weird name_ , she thinks.

“Is that French?”

“Novak has Slavic roots, I believe,” Castiel says, squinting as if trying to remember, “it's my stepfather's surname. I didn't know his family.”

“No, I meant your—” Deanna bites her lower lip, shaking her head as she reaches out a hand, “never mind. I'm Deanna Winchester. People call me Dee.”

Castiel takes her offered hand, and her grip is eager.

“Hello, Dee,” she says.

“Think we covered the hello's already,” Deanna tells her with a laugh, and Castiel withdraws her hand.

“Of course,” Castiel frowns, “is this an interview?”

“If you've got time,” Deanna shrugs.

“I've got nothing but time.”

“So, it's an interview. You have any hospitality experience?”

“I've never worked in the field, but I did attend culinary school.”

 _That explains the cakes_ , Deanna thinks.

“Why were you working in insurance, then?”

Briefly, a pained expression flickers over Castiel's face, but it's gone before it has a chance to settle. Deanna figures it's a sore subject, and her response confirms it.

“My role at Sandover Insurance was something I was pushed into. I wanted to be a chef, but my fa—” she cuts herself off, looking down at the cupcakes with a frown, “well, suffice it to say it didn't happen.”

“Fair enough,” Deanna says, then hesitates before asking the awkward question she'd rather avoid, “can I ask why you were let go from your old job?”

“I was frequently being pressured to assist my immediate supervisors in... well. Legal yet morally reprehensible ventures,” she says vaguely, “it seems that I refused one too many times.”

“They sound charming,” Deanna says, shaking her head, and Castiel squints at her as if she thinks she's being serious.

“I have references if you'd like them.”

“From the dicks who fired you? Don't worry about it. I'm a good judge of character.”

“Alright.”

Deanna's eyes drop to the box of cakes again, and she taps her fingers on the table.

“So ordinarily I'd get you to cook something as part of the interview, but since you've already got these here... can I?”

Castiel pushes the cakes toward her. Up close, the frosting is even more well formed than she'd thought. There are three distinct types, one of each, and Deanna can't decide which to try first.

“They all look incredible,” she says, looking back up with an appreciative smile, “I can never get my frosting to hold it's shape like this.”

“Decorating is my strong point.”

“Yeah, I can tell. Which is which?”

“That is triple salted caramel,” Castiel says, pointing at the cake in gold and white paper, “the pink one that looks like a rose is turkish delight, and this is peanut butter and jelly.”

“Hmm...”

“The PB & J is my favorite,” she adds as an afterthought, and Deanna grins, taking the purple-frosted cake.

It's got a chunk of frosting missing from where Castiel swiped her finger earlier, and Deanna breaks it in half, handing that side over before taking a large bite from her own piece. It's salty and sweet, the cake dense and just moist enough, and there's a blob of grape jelly in it's center. She closes her eyes as she chews, savoring the taste.

“Mmph,” she groans, licking the frosting from her lip before opening her eyes, “this is amazing.”

“Thank you,” Castiel says her cheeks a little pink as she inclines her head.

While Deanna repeats the process with the other two cupcakes—the salted caramel is _definitely_ getting added to the menu—Castiel waits with a hopeful expression on her face.

“You make pie, too?” Deanna asks through her last mouthful of turkish delight, and Castiel nods eagerly.

“I can, yes.”

“Because that's pretty much what people come here for. When they come here. Which isn't often.”

Deanna pulls the paper napkin from under Castiel's coffee and wipes the frosting from her fingertips, studying her.

“Did I mention you'd have hardly any hours?” she says, and Castiel nods.

“Yes, you did. I don't mind.”

“How soon can you start?”she asks, and Castiel exhales a breath Deanna hadn't even noticed she was holding.

She doesn't smile, exactly, but her eyes look brighter somehow, and it makes something terrifying flutter in Deanna's chest. She barely has a moment to recognize the feeling and think _oh, fuck_ , before Castiel is accepting the offered position with another handshake.

“How soon do you need me?”


	2. Sugargate

Outside, the rain grows heavier, and Castiel shows no sign of leaving.

She remains seated at the table by the door, and after pulling the short-lived help wanted sign down from it's place in the window, Deanna returns to sit opposite her without really thinking it through. Castiel just looks placidly at her as though she's waiting for something. The realization that maybe she should speak takes far longer to sweep over her than she'd care to admit, and she searches for something to say.

“So,” she asks, and her voice comes out a little louder than she'd expected, “what d'you do for fun?”

It's an awful question—blind-date material at best—and it comes out so awkwardly that Deanna wants to dissolve into the seat to hide her shame. Castiel doesn't seem put off by it, though. Bizarrely, she seems almost pleased, as though nobody has ever bothered to ask her that before. Hell, considering the kind of people she's been working with, maybe noone has.

“I fence,” she says plainly, like that's the most normal hobby in the world, “and I'm taking aikido lessons.”

“Wait, like, _Above the Law_?”

Castiel squints.

“You know— _Nico_ ,” Deanna says, and Castiel squints harder, “Steven Seagal kicking assorted asses.”

“I don't know who that is.”

“You don't know who Steven Seagal is?”

“I only just started the classes.”

“Right,” Deanna frowns, considering the woman opposite her in an entirely new light, “so. Swords and scissor kicks. Slightly more violent than I would have pegged you for.”

“It's not about violence. Both are actually quite graceful sports,” Castiel says, a little defensive, “and other than that, I bake. Though I suppose that's what I do for work, now. It's been a hobby so long that I'm sure I'll keep referring to it as one for some time.”

“How'd you get into it?”

“I spent a lot of time with my cousin when I was a teenager,” Castiel says, “he's always had a certain proclivity for sugary foods, and whenever I was there we'd make cookies. Well. _I'd_ make cookies. He refused to follow the instructions no matter how many times I told him that he would ruin the recipe, and in the end I'd make him wait while I did it myself.”

A look passes over her face as she finds some humor in the memory, and she looks up at Deanna as she goes on.

“Of course, I found out years later that he'd been playing me. He could cook. He just didn't particularly want to, and he knew that if he messed it up enough times I'd do it for him.”

“Sneaky bastard.”

With a huff of amusement, Castiel shrugs.

“I didn't really mind. I enjoyed the process of creating something out of nothing. It gave me a sense of purpose, in a way.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Deanna says, “makin' stuff helps to feel useful.”

“Yes, exactly.”

Castiel's eyes crinkle at the edges as she studies Deanna, and Deanna feels trapped under the weight of her gaze. It's not an altogether unpleasant feeling—just unusual.

A few customers come in, then, briefly pulling her attention away, but Deanna returns to Castiel once they're gone. They pick up exactly where they left off. Somehow, as stilted as Castiel's manner of speech is, Deanna finds her easier to talk to than most people she meets.

Every time she has to leave to serve a customer, she finds herself moving more quickly, eager to get back to their conversation.

“How old are you?” Castiel asks when she returns to the table for the third time, and Deanna raises her eyebrows as she sits.

“Twenty-eight. Why? How old are you?”

“Twenty-nine,” Castiel says, “I was just thinking that you're very young to own your own business.”

This isn't the aimless chit-chat Deanna usually sticks to with people she doesn't know very well. Despite her tendency to avoid deep conversations, she seems unable to help herself, and before she knows it, talking about how she started up Humble—about how her uncle Bobby had shown up with a check and a gruff reminder that it wasn't charity if he got free pie every time he came to visit—slips into why she started cooking, and from there the story of the day her dad died just kind of falls out.

The thing is, she never talks about this. She's never spoken to anyone other than Sam and Benny about that day, and even then it's only ever been in a vague, sidestepping kind of way. But she talks to Castiel. Tells her about walking to meet her brother at soccer practice in the late afternoon and coming home to find a government car in the driveway, her mom a silent, shaking presence in the living room that seemed too small to hold the two solemn officers who stood before her with their hats in their hands.

“He wasn't even on active duty,” she says, staring down at her hands, “it was a training accident. Went up in a Sea Knight chopper with a couple of new marines, and just...”

Deanna waves her hand vaguely, and Castiel's brow furrows as she reaches out across the table to pat her on the arm. It's a slightly awkward gesture, but it's sincere, and Deanna musters a smile as she looks back up.

“Anyway,” she goes on, rubbing the back of her neck, suddenly a little uncomfortable with how much she's said, “Mom was kind of a wreck for a while.”

“That's certainly understandable.”

“Yeah. I mean, Dad was far from perfect, but he'd still been hers for longer than he hadn't, y'know? High school sweethearts and all that.”

“Did she—”

The bell over the door rings again, and they both look up to see customer walk in. He's a regular, a scruffy guy named Aaron who flirted with Deanna the first time he came in, but the moment she flirted back he clammed right up. He hasn't tried again since. Deanna figures he's shy.

Now, he just nods at her in greeting as he heads toward the display case.

“He's here early,” she says to herself.

Castiel tilts her head in question, and Deanna looks back at her.

“A regular,” she explains, “doesn't usually show up until just before closing time.”

“It's almost half past five,” Castiel points out, and with a confused glance at the clock Deanna sees that she's right.

How two hours have passed without her noticing is a mystery for the ages.

Slow as business has been, Humble can always count on a flock of customers just before closing time. There are a couple of offices nearby, and a bus stop just down the road, so most days a few tired-looking office workers will stop by on their way home, looking for a post-work sugar hit. On the days Aaron comes in, he tends to signal the coming rush. Deanna is about to say as much when the door opens again, and she pushes to her feet.

“I'd better—“ she gestures toward the counter, and Castiel nods in understanding.

“It's fine. I should go, anyway,” Castiel says, and reaches out to shake Deanna's hand again, “thank you again.”

“Hey, just show me how you get your frosting so perfect and that'll be thanks enough.”

“I will do my best,” Castiel says seriously, and Deanna grins at her before making her way over to the counter, where Aaron and the woman who came in behind him are still trying to decide what they want.

Even from across the cafe Deanna feels the icy gust of wind that whips inside when Castiel pushes the door open, and when she looks back she sees Castiel glance forlornly down at her broken umbrella in the trashcan before moving to step outside.

“Hold on,” Deanna calls out to her, reaching underneath the counter to pull out the lost-and-found box.

There's an umbrella there, left behind by some mystery customer's kid weeks ago, and though it's obnoxiously cheerful with a cartoon face and cat ears, she figures it'll help. She holds it out.

“Doesn't that belong to someone?” Castiel asks, making her way back toward the counter, and Deanna shrugs.

“Doubt they'll be back for it in the next fifteen minutes,” she says.

Castiel eyes it for a moment before reaching out to take it, her mouth raising slightly at one side as she nods in thanks, and without another word she leaves. Deanna waves at her through the window before turning to find Aaron frowning at her.

“Decided?” she asks him, and he looks at the case again as if he might have missed something before he answers.

“You didn't make any maple bacon cupcakes today?” he asks hopefully.

Deanna shakes her head.

“Nobody else buys them.”

“People have no taste,” he says with a downturned mouth, “I'll just get a slice of apple pie and a caramel latte.”

In the time it takes to make Aaron's coffee, four other customers make their way in from the cold, and Deanna works quickly, steaming milk and stirring caramel syrup into the paper cup. She serves each waiting customer in quick succession, a few more arriving as she goes, and it's a little after five when the last of them leaves.

Once the door is locked and the blinds are closed, she pulls out her cell to dial Benny's home number. Listening to the _ring, ring, ring_ down the line, she looks at Castiel's broken umbrella and laughs aloud at the mental image of her struggling to hold its bright pink replacement against the wind.

Eventually, there's the click of a connection and the shuffling sound of someone lifting the receiver to their ear, but nobody speaks. Someone huffs noisily, though—wet and raspy like they're unfamiliar with the concept of breathing through their nose.

“Is that you, Isabel?” Deanna asks.

“ _No_ ,” a voice says, incredulous for a four year old, “It's _me._ ”

Deanna grins into the phone.

“Hiya, Junebug.”

There's a long pause, and then a quiet voice mumbles back, “Hello Aunty Dee.”

“Is your dad there?”

“Yes.”

More shuffling.

“Can you go get him for me?”

“Uhuh,” June takes in a deep breath, and Deanna just manages to tilt the phone away from her ear before she screams, “DAAAAAAAD AUNTIE DEE IS ON THE PHONE.”

“Jesus,” Deanna mutters.

“He's coming,” June tells her after a few seconds, voice quiet again.

“Thanks, kiddo.”

“S'okay.”

The phone clatters as June dumps it somewhere, and while she waits, Deanna holds the phone with her shoulder, pulling open the register to count the days takings. Even with the afternoon rush, it's not much. She hears Benny's footsteps and a muffled, _Junie, where'd you put the phone?_ a few seconds before his voice becomes clear.

“Hello?”

“I found us a part time pastry cook,” she tells him, flipping through a depressingly thin stack of bills and noting down the measly total.

“Already?” Benny asks, huffing out as he sits heavily on his couch, “that was fast.”

“That's just how I do,” she says, and Benny snorts at her, “anyway, her name's Castiel. She's gonna cover Mondays through Wednesdays, but she's coming in tomorrow morning to get a feel for the place. But if that doesn't work for you, I can tell her to come in when I'm—”

“Naw, that's fine. I can show her around.”

“Be gentle,” Deanna teases him, pulling out the bank deposit book, “she's kind of awkward.”

“Noted,” Benny laughs, “Where'd you find her?”

“Here. She walked in with a box of cakes, I told her she couldn't bring in outside food, she said she made them,” Deanna shrugs, waving her hand vaguely despite Benny not being able to see her, “yada yada yada.”

“Sounds like the set up for a rom-com.”

“Right,” she laughs, but with the memory of that not-quite smile and the rasp of Castiel's voice, she feels her neck flush and prickle at the suggestion. Thankfully, Benny speaks again before she has to think about it too much.

“She have much experience?”

“Not really. She went to culinary school, though.”

“Where?”

Deanna pauses, staring down at the deposit slip in front of her. _Huh_ , she thinks.

“Uh... I dunno. I guess I forgot to ask.”

“You _forgot_? What'd she do, ask for the job and flash her cleavage?”

“Please. If I wanted to see cleavage I'd tilt my head.”

 _Besides_ , the thought comes unbidden, _if I was staring at anything it was her eyes_.

Deanna clears her throat and signs her name at the bottom of the slip.

“I just forgot,” she says. It doesn't sound entirely convincing, though, and she quickly changes the subject, “you should see the cakes she made. Seriously. If she starts doing the decorating for us, things might actually turn around.”

“That good, huh?

“Trust me, she's a freakin' artist. One of them looked like a—”

“Hold on,” Benny interrupts, and in the background Deanna hears Andrea calling out to him from another room, “sorry Dee, I gotta go. Andrea's trying to give Isabel a bath and June just threw up on the cat.”

“Eugh,” Deanna shudders, “good luck with that.”

Benny doesn't reply before he hangs up, and not for the first time, Deanna is inordinately glad she only ever has to deal with the fun part of looking after her best friend's kids.

By the time she's finished closing up and made a detour to the bank to drop the days takings into the after hours deposit box, it's nearly six in the evening. Her fingers are numb with cold, her hair damp from rain, as soon as she steps into her apartment, Deanna hits the button on the wall heater. Thankfully, the small space doesn't take long to warm up, and after her hands have thawed she shrugs off her coat, leaving it with her bag by the door.

Her apartment is a modest two bedroom, only a couple of blocks away from Humble, and though the furniture is all second hand and the water heater takes about five minutes to actually do anything, she kind of loves it. She's lived here for years—having moved in a couple of months after arriving in Seattle—and she knows every whorl in the living room floorboards and each chip in the bathroom tile. It's not a modern apartment, and it's not a particularly nice apartment, but it's hers.

On her way to the kitchen, she wriggles out of her bra, pulling it from under her shirt and flinging it toward her bedroom on the opposite side of the open plan living room. It hooks onto the doorknob, swinging twice before it settles. She almost wishes someone had been around to witness it.

If anyone were to ask her, she'd say the lack of an audience for all the awesome things she does is the only downside of living alone.

Truthfully, though, the novelty of quiet wore off pretty quickly after Sam cleared out. He'd only lived with her for a couple of months, in the summer between high school and college. That was a few years ago, now, and though she's had more than enough time to get used to the silence of an empty apartment, she still misses the company.

Maybe he'd had a bad habit of leaving trash beside the can instead of in it and trailing awful, toxic smells all through the living room if she ever made the mistake of bringing home Mexican food, but the presence of another person around the house was comforting in a way that peace could never be.

With a wide yawn, she takes a beer from the fridge. The cap pings against the sink, and she takes a deep pull from it before hunting for something she could reasonably call dinner.

As she takes a bowl of leftover pasta from the top shelf of the fridge and sticks it into the microwave, she notices a purple speck of frosting on the edge of her pinky fingernail, somehow missed when she'd washed her hands at the cafe. Sucking it from her finger, Deanna watches her bowl turn slowly in the yellow microwave light, thoughts of her conversation with Castiel tumbling through her mind. It doesn't escape her notice that her heart pounds a little harder at the memory of her brightening eyes. She carefully ignores it, choosing instead to focus on the fact that she just voluntarily spent an entire afternoon spilling her guts to someone who was basically a stranger, and felt better for it. Despite all the stress that had been weighing down on her this morning, she feels oddly bouyant, now. Like things are going to start picking up. Not just business at Humble, but her life in general.

Construction on the burnt out shopping district is soon to be underway—next week, if the notice outside the site is still accurate—and if they can just hold out for a few more months, business will be back on track in no time. Hopefully. Deanna pulls a face. As she makes her way into the living room, twirling pasta around her fork, she shakes off the feeling. Call her a pessimist, but the way she sees it, being hopeful is nothing but a surefire way to end up disappointed.

Pushing the million thoughts clamouring for her attention to the back of her mind, Deanna reclines onto the lumpy gray couch with her bowl on her stomach and switches on the TV.

A certain cowboy-boot wearing doctor requires her attention, stat, and nobody needs anything from her for the next forty-eight hours. She almost wishes she had the energy to go out.

 

 

* * *

 

It's before nine on Friday morning, and Deanna's internal clock doesn't seem to care that it's her day off. Though she's been awake for a while she's still in bed, re-reading Big Sur, when her cell phone rings, the repetitive intro of _Thunderstruck_ playing noisily from her bedside table. She lets her head flop back against her pillow to glare at it for interrupting her. Truth be told, she's been stuck on the same line— _h_ _er voice lutes brokenly like a heart lost—_ for about twenty minutes, but that's beside the point.

It's still early, and there's a half-finished bag of peanut m&m's laying on her lap that she'd like to eat in peace.

With a sigh, she tosses a handful into her mouth and picks up her phone with every intention of hitting ignore. But it's her brother calling. What with all the extra hours she's been pulling, and his high work load at Stanford, she hasn't had a chance to talk to him in what feels like weeks. Shuffling to sit more upright, she presses answer.

“Heya, Sammy,” she says through her half-chewed mouthful of chocolate, and she can just about hear Sam's grimace at her lack of manners on the other end of the line.

“What are you eating?” he asks instead of greeting her, and she crunches again, extra loud, before she answers.

“Trail mix,” she lies.

Sam huffs at her, not fooled in the slightest.

“Isn't it a little early for candy?”

“It's a little early for phone calls, smartass.”

“Like you haven't been awake three hours already.”

“Exactly,” she says, stretching her neck from side to side, “which means it's practically lunch time for me, and that makes candy a perfectly acceptable snack. How're you gonna be a lawyer if you can't even use logic, Sam?”

He laughs, and Deanna's grin widens.

“Fair enough,” he says, clearly giving up on the argument, and she considers it a victory on her part.

“How's things, anyway?” she asks.

“Good,” Sam says, “really good. Remember that lecturer I was telling you about? The one I had for forensic psych?”

“That weaselly guy with an attitude problem?”

“Yeah. He got fired.”

“Huh. I guess you weren't just whining then.”

“Ha ha,” Sam says, voice laced with sarcasm, “anyway, his replacement is awesome. And get this—she's from Lawrence. I'm planning to use that information to my advantage.”

“Ahh, there's the lawyer shining through.”

Sam snorts.

“Hey, there's no harm in finding common ground. I consider it insurance,” he says, and Deanna's mind immediately returns to Castiel.

“I got a new girl,” she blurts out, then shakes her head, “ _hired_ a new girl. A pastry cook.”

“Really? Didn't you say business was kind of... non-existent?”

“Yeah, it is, but Benny and Kevin both had to cut back on their hours.”

“What's she like?”

“She's... well...”

Deanna chews on her lip, looking up at the water stained ceiling.

“Wow, that hot, huh?” Sam says after a long moment, and Deanna rolls her eyes.

“No,” she says, then smirks a little, “actually, yeah, kinda. I was just trying to think of a less harsh way of saying she's weird as fuck.”

“When does she start?

“Today. Benny's showing her around. Almost wish I was working so I could see her in action.”

“Careful,” Sam says, though it sounds like he's grinning, “she'll sue your creepy ass.”

“I was talking about her decorating, you dick. I do have _some_ self control.”

“So there's something to control, is there?” he asks, and he's got that tone that he mastered at age fifteen, the one that says _it's my duty to annoy you._

“I'm hanging up, Sam.”

“Wait, wait—“ he laughs, “are you doing anything today?”

“Nope. I've got an entire day of freedom. No people, no plans, no pants.”

“You might want to change that last part. Jess'll be there in half an hour.”

“Wait, how—?”

There's a loud _click_ , and Deanna stares at her phone.

“ _Dammit_ , Sam.”

With a grunt, Deanna forces herself out of bed and rummages through her closet for a pair of jeans, frowning all the way. It's not that she doesn't like hanging out with her brother's fiancee—Jess is awesome, and she'll fight anyone who suggests otherwise—but there's only one reason she'd be coming over right now.

She's been on Deanna's back about finding a dress for the wedding for months.

It's fair, Deanna figures, considering the big day is only a few short weeks away now, but she doesn't _do_ dresses. Not the frilly, wedding-appropriate kind, anyway. It's not the fact that they're girly that bothers her—she's plenty feminine—it's just that they're uncomfortable. Every time she lets someone convince her to put on a dress she ends up spending the entire day tugging at the skirt, paranoid that it's tucked into her underwear or lifting in the breeze.

She's kind of been hoping that if she puts it off long enough, Jess will just accept that she's lost this particular bridezilla battle.

Apparently, though, that's not happening.

 

* * *

 

“Sorry,” Jess says when Deanna opens the door twenty minutes later, but she doesn't look it in the slightest. She's bright-eyed and California-tanned, her blonde hair perfectly curled and her attitude far too perky for any time before noon. “Will it help if I promise to buy you lunch?”

“A little,” Deanna says, accepting one of Jess' body-crushing hugs, “what are you even doing in Seattle?”

“One of my friends just moved to Mercer Island,” Jess says, pulling the door shut and following Deanna as she heads for the couch to put on her shoes, “I wanted to see her new place before the wedding, so I came up for a couple of days.”

Nodding, Deanna yawns deeply, pulling her bootlaces tight.

“So I'm guessing you're still hell bent on me wearing some dainty—”

“I never said dainty,” Jess points out, “just... nice.”

Deanna pulls a face.

“Come on,” Jess says, pulling her to her feet, “we'll just see if we can find anything you like. If we don't, we don't.”

With a sigh, Deanna grabs her bag and checks for her keys.

“Yeah, alright,” she mutters as she locks the door, “you mind if we stop at work first, though? New girl started today and I want to see how things are going.”

“Sure thing,” Jess says, linking her arm through Deanna's and pulling her toward the stairs, “I wanted coffee anyway.”

 

 

* * *

 

The bell tinkles as they step inside, and the first thing Deanna sees is Pamela sitting behind the counter, blinking furiously. Her cheeks are streaked with tears, and Benny is leaning over her, peering into her red-rimmed eyes.

“What happened to you?” Deanna asks, and they both look over at her.

“Castiel,” Pamela says scornfully, and Deanna grimaces.

“Not off to a great start then,” she says, making her way over with Jess on her heels.

Pamela's expression is pinched, and her face is splotchy, paler than usual against her long, dark hair.

“She hit the button on the mixer before she'd put any wet ingredients in,” Benny tells Deanna with a frown, pulling down Pamela's cheeks with his fingertips as he checks that her eyes are clear, “sugar went everywhere.”

“Mainly in my face, though,” Pamela says, batting Benny's hands away.

Turning back to Deanna, Benny shrugs.

“She's having first day jitters, I guess,” he says, and flips open the lid of the first aid kit, already set out on the countertop. Rummaging through, he finds the eye drops, and he hands them over to Pamela. She squints at the bottle for a moment before handing it back.

“You do it. I can't see shit,” she complains, and Benny's mouth lifts in amusement as he unscrews the cap.

“Where is she now?” Deanna asks.

“Cleaning up out back.”

With a glance over at Jess, standing in the doorway, Deanna nods toward the kitchen.

“Give me a couple of minutes,” she says, and Jess smiles.

“No problem.”

While Benny does his best to get the eye-drops into Pamela's eyes as she asks Jess how the wedding plans are coming along, Deanna makes her way past them and into the kitchen. It's empty, and all traces of the sugar incident have been swept away.

From the back room, there's the sound of a muffled voice, and Deanna walks in to find Castiel sitting on the edge of the desk with her cell pressed to her ear, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. When Deanna drums lightly on the door frame she looks up, and all the color drains from her face.

“I have to go,” she says tiredly into her phone, and once she's hung up she takes in a breath and stands up straight, as if bracing for bad news.

“How is Pamela?”

Her expression is drawn, tense, and Deanna immediately feels sorry for her.

“She'll live,” Deanna replies, aiming for levity, “you doing okay?”

Castiel tilts her head slightly to the left.

“I managed to avoid most of the sugar,” she says, as if pointing out something obvious, and Deanna shakes her head.

“No,” Deanna shakes her head, “I mean you look kind of panicked.”

“I could have done serious damage to her eyes,” Castiel says with a frown, and Deanna raises her palms.

“Well you didn't.”

For a moment, Castiel looks ready to argue about it, but then she deflates, shoulders sinking as she sits again, not quite relaxed—Deanna doubts she does that often—but she seems considerably less tense than she had been.

“So,” Deanna goes on, “other than trying to blind Pam, how's your first shift going?”

Castiel's eyes go wide.

“I didn't try to—” she cuts herself off, realizing halfway through the sentence that Deanna is teasing her, and shakes her head, “it's been good. I think.”

“Benny hasn't been giving you too hard a time?”

“He's a little intimidating.”

“He's a teddy bear,” Deanna says, “just ask about his kids and he'll warm right up.”

“I'll keep that in mind.”

There's a knock at the door behind them, and Benny's head sticks in through the gap.

“Pam thinks there's still some stuff in her eyes,” he says, “I'm gonna take her to the doctor just to be safe. You mind sticking around a little while to cover?”

“Yeah, sure thing.”

Heading back to the front of the cafe, Castiel following to apologize to Pamela again before she leaves with Benny, Deanna finds Jess standing at the counter giving her a look as if she half suspects Deanna orchestrated the entire thing to get out of buying a dress.

“Looks like we're not going shopping, then,” she says.

“Sorry.”

Dubiously, Jess raises her eyebrow.

“Well, sorry we won't get to hang out, anyway. The dress thing, not so much.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Jess laughs, shaking her head as Deanna rounds the counter, “I guess I'll head back to Madison's.”

She swoops in to kiss Deanna's cheek, squeezing her briefly.

“See you soon,” Deanna says, and Jess beams before she leaves.

 

 

* * *

 

Heading back into the kitchen, Deanna swaps her jacket for her apron and washes her hands.

“So,” she says to Castiel, “what did Benny have you doing before Sugargate?”

“Prep work, mainly. I think he was intending to make pie filling next.”

“Did you have a chance to sample everything yet?”

“Yes.”

“Which do you want to try your hand at first?”

“Which is your favorite?” Castiel asks after a moments deliberation.

“Apple pie,” Deanna says, grinning wide, “buttery, flaky, delicious apple pie.”

“Then lets start with that.”

The shells have already been blind baked, so it's just a matter of preparing the fruit. Pushing a mixing bowl over toward Castiel, Deanna points toward the fridge.

“Grab the apples,” she says, “and there should be some lemon zest in there, too.”

As she instructs Castiel on how they make the pie, pointing out the locations of things in the kitchen and explaining that _yes_ she's sure she wants to put vanilla extract and heavy cream in with the apples, despite how odd it sounds, she remembers her conversation with Benny from the night before.

“So hey, Cas, I forgot to ask you—where did you go to culinary school?”

“Seattle School of Culinary Arts.”

“Wait, really? That's where I met Benny. What year did you graduate?”

Castiel's tongue darts out over her lower lip, and she glances around the room as if looking for answers. When she finds none, she speaks quickly, her jaw tensing.

“I didn't.”

Deanna's eyes widen. _Probably something I should have asked her yesterday_ , she thinks, and clears her throat.

“Why not?”

Castiel mutters something, but it's too quiet to make out over the sound of her dicing the apples.

“What?”

With a sigh, Castiel stops chopping, staring down at the pile of fruit.

“I said I, uh... I stabbed another student.”

Of anything she'd expected, _stabbed someone_ didn't even factor in as a possible response. Deanna stares, a little dumbstruck, her eyes flicking toward the large knife still in Castiel's hand. Without really thinking about it, she takes a half step backward.

“You _stabbed_ someone?”

“He startled me,” Castiel says, her tone defensive.

“Oh, well in that case.”

“He was fine,” Castiel says, putting the knife down, “it was an accident.”

Deanna blinks at her.

“What'd you do, zone out and think it was fencing time?”

“I left one of my knives behind, and when I went back to get it after class he walked in behind me. I didn't hear him, and when he tapped me on the shoulder I...” Castiel shrugs helplessly, “it was a reflex. I just happened to be holding my paring knife. The whole reason I'm interested in martial arts is that I'd like to have better control over my body.”

With a tense jaw, Castiel crosses her arms over her chest.

“I'm not making much of an impression today, am I?”

“Oh, you're making an impression,” Deanna tells her with a laugh, “so what happened after you stuck the guy?”

“An... unpleasant series of meetings with the police and the school advisory board. Alistair told everyone what happened, but made out that I'd attacked him. I lost my scholarship. In the end I had no choice but to leave.”

“I'm guessing that's when you started at Sandover?”

“Yes. Zachariah offered me a position on the provision that I would obtain a degree in finance while working part time,” she says, and at Deanna's frown she adds, “my brother. He's CEO.”

“Is he the one who fired you?”

“Yes.”

“God,” she says, shaking her head, “that... that's royally fucked up.”

“Please,” Castiel says, “I may not have graduated, but I _can_ do this. I know that what happened with Pamela probably doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in my abilities, but I just... let me prove it. I'm good at this. I can do this.”

“I believe you,” Deanna says, and she means it, “I'll just make sure not to sneak up on you when you're holding sharp objects.”

The look Castiel gives her could kill a weaker woman, but Deanna just laughs, pointing toward the rest of the apples.

“Get to choppin',” she says with a grin, “we've still gotta make the cherry filling after this.”

Deanna keeps an ear out for the sound of the bell out front, and in between a few customers they work their way through the apples, then the cherries, and finally, a mixture of peaches and raspberries. For a long while, they don't speak of anything other than what they're doing, and it's not until they're preparing pastry for the pie lids that Castiel steers conversation away from their task.

“That woman who was here earlier,” she starts, and Deanna looks over to see her hesitating, her eyes firmly fixed on the rolling pin, “your friend.”

“Who, Jess?”

“Yes. She seemed nice.”

It's an accurate observation, if a little odd, and Deanna nods.

“Yeah, she is,” Deanna agrees, “until she tries to make me shop for dresses. Then she's a goddamn nightmare.”

“Is that what you were meant to be doing today? Dress shopping?”

“Mm,” Deanna nods, “kinda glad I managed to get out of it to be honest. I don't do dresses, wedding or not.”

“Oh,” Castiel's brow furrows slightly, and for the briefest moment, her eyes flick down to Deanna's left hand, “you're getting married?”

Deanna barks out a laugh.

“God, no. That'd require me dating someone for more than a week. And possibly some changes to the law,” she shakes her head, “my brother is getting married. Jess is his fiancee.”

“Ah,” Castiel nods, returning her attention to the pastry dough, “I take it she has traditional ideas of how her wedding guests should dress.”

“Something like that. But like I said—”

“You don't do dresses.”

“Exactly.”

“It's a shame,” Castiel says, adding a little more flour to the rolling pin, “I think you'd look nice in a dress.”

The bell over the front door sounds, then, and Deanna is saved the trouble of coming up with a response. Instead, she just smiles awkwardly before she makes her way out to serve whoever is waiting. A little desperately, she tells herself not to read into what was, in all likelihood, a completely innocent statement.

By the time Jo arrives to start her shift at eleven, Deanna has spent the majority of the morning wondering if it would be a bad idea to try and find out if Castiel is single. And if she is, if she's into women. Not that she'd do anything about it if she was, of course. It'd be innappropriate, considering that Castiel is her employee. She's fairly certain it'd be a terrible idea, but still, there's a little part of her—a part that she's sure shouldn't be put in charge of anything—that wants to just flat out ask.

Thankfully, Jo's excitable chatter doesn't leave much room for anyone else to speak, and half an hour after she arrives, Deanna lets the barista drag Castiel out into the front of the cafe to show her all the ins and outs of the espresso machine.

For the last twenty minutes, Castiel has been casting pleading looks in Deanna's direction, apparently not entirely sure how to handle such a high level of energy. When Benny brings a clear-eyed Pamela back a little before noon, Deanna calls out to let her know her shift is over, and she sighs in relief.

“Thank you for your tutelage,” she says sincerely to Jo, and makes her way into the back room to get her coat.

Deanna follows, grabbing her own, and holds open the door as she steps outside. For a few, irrationally hopeful seconds, she wonders if they're going to walk in the same direction, but Castiel just pulls her coat around herself, nods in farewell, and walks briskly away.

Deanna tucks her hands into her pockets and turns on her heel, setting off toward home.

 _Probably for the best_ , she thinks.

Still, she glances back over her shoulder more than once. On the third look, as she's nearing the corner, she's sure she sees Castiel doing the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a quick note: in this story Deanna is 28 years old, which means the year is 2007. I only mention this because if it were set in the present day, Deanna's comment “and possibly some changes to the law” wouldn't make any sense as same sex marriage was legalized in the state of Washington in 2012. Way to go, Washington! I strive for accuracy, and I'd hate to think someone from Washington read this and thought I hadn't done my research. Carry on.]


	3. A Series of Bad Ideas

A side effect of having mostly office buildings in Humble's immediate vicinity means that they don't get much business on the weekend. As a rule, being open on Sundays is just shy of pointless, and Deanna spends most of the day acting as a mediator between Jo and Kevin in their ongoing debate about what constitutes good music.

Deanna finds herself looking forward to Monday morning, when she'll get to spend a few more hours getting to know Castiel. It's strange how quickly she's found herself warming to her, considering the fact that she tends to take a long time to like anyone at all, but she's glad for it. If there's one thing she knows, it's that good friends are hard to come by. She has a feeling that Castiel is going to be one of them.

It's in a haze of early morning fog on Monday that Deanna finds Castiel standing ramrod-straight beside the cafe's back door. She's wearing that beige overcoat again, and another pantsuit identical to the last. Deanna wonders how many she has hanging in her closet.

“You're still in business mode,” she says as she approaches, pulling out her keys, and Castiel looks up at her with a frown.

“What?”

“The suit. You can aim a little lower.”

Gesturing to her own attire—a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved plaid shirt under a navy coat—Deanna opens the door, holding it wide to let Castiel inside.

“Oh. Okay.”

“I mean, you can wear a suit to work if you really want to, but it's kind of—”

“It's inappropriate for the kitchen,” Castiel says as they walk through the back room, shucking their coats and leaving them to hang over the chair there, “of course. I'll find something else for tomorrow.”

The lights in the kitchen hum as they warm up, and Deanna makes her way around the space, setting up for the day. Castiel works quietly beside her, only pausing to ask where things are a couple of times, and Deanna finds herself impressed with how quickly she's caught on to everything.

By half past six, there's two batches of cupcakes waiting to be frosted, and Deanna grins as she pulls her collection of piping nozzles from their place in the cupboard.

“Ready to tell me all your secrets?” she says, and Castiel glances over at her.

“No,” Castiel says flatly, taking a bowl from the shelf, “but I will show you how to frost a cupcake.”

Deanna snorts, making her way to the fridge.

“I need to stop hiring smartasses.”

Under Castiel's instruction, Deanna prepares a Swiss meringue buttercream for the first batch. It's the first time in years that she's followed another person's orders in a kitchen, but somehow it isn't as jarring as she would have expected.

“It holds it's shape much longer than regular buttercream,” Castiel explains as she watches Deanna dissolve sugar into egg whites, “keep an eye on the temperature. We don't want the egg to start cooking.”

“Looks pretty good, now.”

Castiel steps closer to look into the bowl, and after a moment she takes the spoon and drips a little of the mixture onto her fingertips, rubbing them together.

“It's still a little grainy,” she says, handing the spoon back, “a minute longer should do it.”

Deanna keeps stirring, and after testing the consistency a second time she transfers the bowl to the mixer and beats it until the frosting is thick and peaking in the bowl. She folds through a few tablespoons of pureed raspberries, and when she's finally happy with the color she puts down the spoon and turns to Castiel. 

“This part is all you,” she says, “no amount of practice is ever going to make my hand steady enough for fancy piping.”

Still, she watches as Castiel tops each cake with an intricate rosette.

She's concentrating, her lower lip pulled between her teeth and her brow furrowed as she twists her wrist at the end of each swirl. Her motions are steady, controlled, and Deanna can tell that she's got natural skill. It's a shame she hasn't been doing this professionally for years.

“Fuck, that looks good,” she says, and Castiel looks up at her. For the first time since they met, she really smiles. It's all teeth and gums, and Deanna thinks its the best thing she's ever seen. Her stomach flip flops, and she grins back even as she panics internally. Because she's got a crush. A god damned _crush_. And having a crush on an employee is not a good idea.

“I'll have to get you to bring in the recipe for those salted caramel ones,” Deanna says, forcing the feeling down, “and the PB &J's. We can make them next week.”

“I can write them down from memory today, if you like,” Castiel says, finishing the final cake with a flourish.

“Even better.”

They move on to the second batch, red-velvet with cream cheese frosting, and by the time they're done the pie shells in the oven are ready to be filled with fruit and nuts and caramel. The two of them work well together, Deanna thinks. She just seems to know what Castiel is going to ask before she has to ask it, and it seems to go the other way, too. The result is a efficient kitchen, and the morning's work is completed in record time. 

When the reconstruction of the nearby shopping strip begins at seven on the dot as promised, they are both out by the front counter, arranging cakes and pastries in the display case. The windows rattle with the sound of a jackhammer, and Deanna looks toward them with a frown.

“Glad I'm not still trying to sleep,” Deanna says over the noise, and Castiel nods in agreement, squinting as she looks in at the display. Carefully, she pushes one cake a half inch to the left so it's lined up with the edge of the plate.

“Do you live close by?”

“A few blocks over.”

“Hopefully they'll have finished by your day off.”

“A girl can dream.”

The noise continues through the rest of the day, and Tuesday doesn't bring any relief. All through the morning, the the foundations shake and rattle. On the plus side, the cool Seattle drizzle keeps the dust at bay, and that's at least one thing to be grateful for. Still, if it weren't for the good company that Castiel provides, and the easy conversation between them to distract her, she's pretty sure she'd have lost her mind by mid-morning.

When Pamela arrives, she heads straight for the stereo.

“Gotta drown out that racket,” she announces to the cafe at large, “anyone mind?”

There are three customers in total, and when none protest, she switches out the usual mix CD for something louder.

“What is that?” Castiel asks, sticking her head of the kitchen, and Pamela tosses the CD case toward her. She catches it easily.

“ _Frankenchrist,_ ” Castiel reads aloud from the front, completely deadpan, and flips the case around to read the track listing, “I like it.”

“My flawless music taste is second only to my violently good looks,” Pamela tells her, slipping on her apron as she sends a wink toward Castiel, who turns a bright shade of pink before averting her eyes and reading over the rest of the track list.

Deanna watches the whole exchange from her place beside the espresso machine, and tries to ignore the part of her brain that's telling her that Castiel is probably into women. It's irrelevant. She can't do anything, so she doesn't want to know. She spends the rest of the morning avoiding conversation with her if she can help it. Even after Castiel leaves for the day, she barely speaks to Pamela, instead focusing all her attention on writing up a list of possible new pie flavors to trial.

At half past one, Deanna heads into the back room for her things, and as she's walking out through the cafe toward the door, Pamela calls out to her.

“We still on for tonight?”

For the past two years, Deanna has been meeting Pamela for dinner every few weeks. Tonight, she'd really prefer to just go home and lay on her couch, but she bailed last time they had plans, and she doesn't want to stand Pamela up again. She nods, pulling on her jacket.

“Richie's at seven?”

“I'll see you there,” Pamela says. 

As she waves goodbye and steps outside, Deanna sees a look on Pamela's face that she doesn't trust in the slightest.

 

***

 

Richie's is a little place a few blocks from Pamela's apartment. It's busy on Tuesdays, and Deanna is surprised to see Pamela is already sitting in a booth waiting when she arrives. Usually they have to wait at the bar. As Deanna sinks down onto the familiar vinyl cushions, Pamela looks up at her with barely contained mirth in her eyes.

“So,” she says before Deanna can even say hello, “you're into the new girl.”

Pushing a beer across the table toward her, Pamela grins. She should have seen this coming, considering Pamela's suspiciously accurate intuition. There's no use in trying to deny it. Once Pamela knows something, she _knows_ , and no amount of reasoning will convince her otherwise. Deanna doesn't believe in psychics, but she's convinced that Pamela has some kind of superpower. Still, she figures she'll be able to skirt around the crush if she acknowledges that she thinks Castiel is attractive. It's worth a shot, she thinks.

“You think she's hot,” Pamela goes on, and Deanna huffs, picking up her beer. Fucking psychic.

“She _is_.”

“And?” Pamela prompts, leaning forward with her elbows on the table, eyes bright.

“And nothing,” Deanna says, pausing for a long pull of her beer, “I pretty much think everyone is hot.”

With a snort, Pamela picks up her menu.

“Well, you _are_ surrounded by beautiful people every day,” she says.

“Barely keeping my hands off you, Pam.”

“Don't I know it, sugar.”

Looking over the menu, Pamela winks, and Deanna laughs, leaning back in the booth to look around the busy restaurant. She already knows what she's getting. This place makes an amazing cheesesteak, and she's been craving one for about a week.

“Seriously though,” Pamela goes on after a moment, putting the menu down, “this isn't just a matter of attraction. There's something there between the two of you... I don't know what to call it.”

“I've got a couple of choice words for you.”

“Rude, rude, fuckin' rude,” Pamela says, “I'm being serious. There's something _there_.”

“Yeah, it's called a working relationship,” Deanna says, waving at the waiter so they can order.

“Hmm,” Pamela looks her over, ignoring Deanna's words completely, “I'll have to have another look at the two of you together tomorrow. Get a better reading.”

Deanna groans, and is glad when Pamela drops the topic to instead tell her all about the guy she's been seeing. He's in a band, naturally, and at some point in the near future Pamela insists that she's going to drag her along to one of his shows.

They stay out far too late, and Deanna drinks far too much. 

When her alarm goes off at quarter past four on Wednesday morning it takes all her self control to keep from throwing it at the wall. She downs three glasses of water and heads to work via the 7/11 on the corner to stock up on painkillers and Gatorade.

Somehow, when the sound of power tools returns at seven it seems even louder than yesterday, vibrating up through the floor and setting Deanna's teeth on edge. When it's all done, she is going to love that shopping strip. Right now, she hates it with everything she has. Combined with her hangover, the noise is headache-inducing, and it doesn't take long before it's done just that.

After their first few customers have left, Deanna presses her eyes shut and rolls her knuckles against her neck.

“You look unwell,” Castiel tells her, and Deanna waves off her concern.

“Just a headache.”

But by the time Pamela comes in to start her shift at eleven, Deanna's brain is pounding in her skull, and Castiel is looking at her like she's worried she's going to black out.

“You look like crap,” Pamela tells her.

“Thanks, Pam.”

“Maybe it's a migraine,” Castiel says with a worried crease in her brow, and Deanna is ready to argue when the light coming through the window catches on a customer's glasses and slices into her head like a knife.

“Ugh, yeah,” she says, pressing her eyes shut, “I'm gonna take a break. I'll be out back if you guys need me.”

“Sure thing, Dee,” Pamela says, “sorry I kept feeding you beers.”

“I'll forgive you eventually.”

With the lights down low, Deanna sits with her head on the desk in the back room and wills the noise to stop. At some point she falls asleep, and she only wakes when a gentle hand rests against her arm.

“What—?”

“Sorry,” Castiel whispers, pulling her hand away, “you're sitting on my coat.”

“What time is it?”

“Half past twelve.”

“Your shift is over,” Deanna says, blinking the spots in her eyes away, and Castiel nods.

“I can stay to help Pamela if you're still not well.”

“Nah, you go home. I'm good.”

“Are you sure?”

“I'm sure. Thanks, Cas.”

Standing, she takes Castiel's coat from the chair and hands it over.

On her way back to the front of the cafe, she stops in the bathroom to wash her face and sees a dusty patch left behind where Castiel had touched her. Her heart thuds, hard, and she turns a little to the side. 

She shouldn't enjoy the sight of a powdered sugar handprint on her arm quite this much. She knows this. Still, in the bright light, she runs her fingertips over the sugary print and smiles, keeps on smiling for a good thirty seconds with a blossoming warmth in her chest, and then, as soon as she realizes what she's doing, the feeling gives way to cold dread.

_Fuck fuck fucking fuck_ , she thinks, hurriedly slapping the sugar away as if it'll take the moment with it, because being head over fucking heels for an employee is, she's guessing, significantly worse than having a crush on one.

When she steps out into the open, Pamela looks at her with that damn knowing expression, but something in the look on Deanna's own face stops her from saying anything. Despite her best efforts, as the day wears on, Deanna catches herself thinking of Castiel more often than she cares to admit.

In the end, not even sleep is enough to stop it. That night her dreams are embarrassingly sappy, the kind of saccharine, romantic drivel that she'd refuse to watch if it were in a movie, and she wakes up smiling despite herself. By the time she's finished getting dressed for work the next day she's all but convinced that hiring Castiel was the worst mistake she's ever made.

She thanks a God she doesn't believe in that it's Thursday, and heads in to work eager to spend an unfrustrated few hours with Benny. Naturally, he knows the moment he lays eyes on her that something is wrong, and he raises his brow as he hangs up his coat.

“What's going on?” he asks, and she just about groans.

“Would you believe me if I said nothing?”

“Not even a little.”

“Figured.”

“Might as well spill it now,” he says, “save us both the headache.”

“Yeah, I don't think it'll help,” she says, heading into the kitchen after him.

“Hmmph,” he says, but doesn't question her further, and it's a few hours later that Deanna cracks.

“It's Cas,” she says, slumping against the countertop, and Benny puts down the rolling pin, dusting off his hands on his apron.

“What about her?”

“She's...” Deanna scrunches up her nose, glancing sidelong at Benny, and waves her hand in the air, “y'know.”

“...a cat person?” he guesses after a long pause, then, “allergic to peanuts?”

Deanna slumps against the counter and covers her face.

“I like her,” she says through her hands, and Benny exhales loudly.

“Jesus Christ, Dee.”

“I know, I know.”

“Now when you say _like her_ ,” he says, carefully, “is this just about wanting to hook up with her, or—?”

Deanna glares, and Benny raises his hands in defense. Sure, she's been somewhat liberal with her sexual partners, and she does have a tendency toward the casual hookup, but this—the bat-sized butterflies and the disturbingly domestic dreams that she woke up from this morning? Not so casual.

“This isn't about that,” she says, “I _like_ her.”

Benny doesn't seem convinced, and Deanna sighs before adding, “I told her about what happened to Dad.”

“You've only known her a week.”

“I told her the first day we met.”

“You didn't tell _me_ that for two years.”

“I know.”

“Is she even into women?”

“Maybe? I think so. But it doesn't matter. I can't do anything about it. I figure I'll just, y'know. Ignore it. Until it goes away.”

“Because the Dee Winchester special has worked wonders for you in the past,” Benny says.

“What the hell else am I supposed to do?”

Benny looks at her with pity and thumps her on the shoulder.

“Good luck,” he says, turning back to his work.

“Yeah,” Deanna tells him with a sigh, pulling the oven door open to take out a batch of french vanilla cupcakes, “I'm gonna need it.”

 

***

 

Deanna spends her entire Thursday afternoon on the phone, being lectured by her mom on the importance of wearing a nice dress to her brother's wedding. It's the kind of conversation she'd pay to get out of, but tonight she's grateful for it. Anything that'll distract her from thoughts of Castiel is a good thing.

Her weekend is eaten away by chores. Laundry and grocery shopping and a thorough scrub of the bathroom floor take up most of it, and when she's finally done on Saturday afternoon she collapses in front of the TV. 

She falls asleep halfway through Evil Dead II and wakes up at quarter to one on Sunday morning with a kink in her neck and a bad case of drymouth, and after setting her alarm for four o'clock she crashes into bed with her clothes on.

It's shortly after she's finished work for the day on Sunday, leaving Jo and Kevin to a heated debate about the merits of REO Speedwagon, that she finds her way home blocked by police. There's the smell of fuel on the air, and halfway down the block she can see a station wagon on it's side, half crumpled against the mover's truck that's stopped on an awkward angle in the middle of the road.

“Gotta go around, hon,” a short, middle-aged cop tells her, pointing down a side street, “road's closed to the next intersection.”

The detour takes her past a convenience store and an old dance studio, and when she glances in through the floor-to-ceiling windows she stops in her tracks.

Apparently it's not a dance studio anymore. There's a red sign printed on the window that reads _Aikido Shudokan_ , and beyond it, a class is in progress.

Castiel is in the middle of it.

While the rest of the class sits against the wall and the instructor stands with his arms folded, watching, Castiel faces a tall blond man at the room's center.

As Deanna watches, she swoops forward and catches the man's arm, and in a fluid move that's almost like dancing, she spins him around, easily tossing all six-and-change feet of him as if he weighs nothing. 

In seconds he's flat on the ground. Castiel pins him down with a hand spread out against his chest. 

After a pause and a nod from the instructor, she pulls him back to his feet. 

He's barely had a second to recover before she suddenly kneels, pulling him over her shoulder and flipping him onto the mat with ease.

Deanna feels her mouth go dry.

“God _damn_ ,” she breathes, “I'm screwed.”

There's something mesmerizing in the way Castiel moves around the mat. She has a kind of easy grace that is entirely incongruous with the formal cadence of her speech and the stiff set of her shoulders. With every sweep of her legs, the long black skirt she wears flies out in an arc, and she glides across the floor. She _floats_. Deanna can't seem to pull herself away.

She's been there a couple of minutes, practically hypnotized, when someone in the street honks their horn, and her forehead hits the glass before she even realizes she's flinched. When she raises her eyes to look back in the window, the entire class is staring at her. _Shit._

She backs up a step, but it's too late. Castiel's eyes are locked on hers, and she's frowning, tilting her head a little to the side as if to ask what Deanna is doing there.

“Sorry,” Deanna mouths, and Castiel says something to her class before making her way toward the door.

When she pulls it open, warm air flows out onto the street. Castiel's face is pink with exertion, and her eyes reflect the streetlamps that are just beginning to flicker on.

Deanna smiles. It feels like possibly the most awkward expression she's ever had on her face.

“Are you alright?” Castiel asks, breathing heavily, and Deanna searches for speech.

“Yeah, uh,” she scrunches up her nose, “fine.”

“The class is almost over.”

“Okay?”

“I'm going to get something to eat after,” Castiel says, and Deanna raises her brows, “you're welcome to join me.”

“Oh. Yeah, sure.”

“Do you want to come in?”

“I'll wait here.”

Over the next ten minutes, Deanna considers leaving at least a dozen times. In her head the words _this is a bad idea_ are repeating themselves ad infinitum, but she firmly reminds herself that it would only be a bad idea if it were a date. Which it isn't. So it's fine.

She's leaning against the wall, her hands tucked under her arms, when the door opens with a squeak. The blond guy is the first to walk out, now dressed in a v-neck that would end at his navel if it went any lower. He looks over at her while he holds the door.

“How's your head?” he asks with a smirk, and Deanna is about to make a sarcastic reply when Castiel walks outside after him.

“Goodbye, Balthazar,” she says pointedly, and he laughs, ducking forward to kiss Castiel's cheek before heading off down the road. Deanna watches him go with a frown.

“How _is_ your head?” Castiel asks, hitching a bag up over her shoulder, and Deanna grimaces, following when Castiel starts walking down the road.

“It's fine. Aside from the general sense of embarrassment, I'm good. Sorry I, uh... interrupted.”

“It's not a problem. We were basically done.”

Castiel's dark hair is slowly working it's way free of the elastic, and a few loose curls move with the breeze as they walk. Deanna is struck by the sudden urge to tuck them behind her ear, and she shoves her hands more firmly into her pockets. _This is definitely a bad idea_ , she thinks, biting on the inside of her cheek, and she quickly scrambles for a way to get out of having dinner with her. Unfortunately, she seems utterly incapable of coming up with anything, and before she knows it Castiel is holding open the door to a burger joint.

_This is not a date_ , she tells herself, and nods in thanks as she steps inside, _this is the same as dinner with Pam._

It's not the same as dinner with Pamela. For one, Castiel doesn't have the same qualms about eating with her hands that Pamela does, and for another, she keeps knocking her knees into Deanna's under the table and leaving them there. As if she hasn't noticed. And Deanna doesn't know where to look. What to say. If Castiel is bothered by the silence, she doesn't let on, but Deanna can feel it like a third presence at the table.

“How long have you been taking aikido?” she asks finally, and Castiel thinks for a moment.

“Tonight was my fourth class.”

“You've only had four classes? Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“Wow.”

“Did I look good?”

Deanna puts all of her attention on the double bacon cheeseburger in front of her and wills her face not to betray how good she thinks Castiel looked.

“Looked like more than four classes worth, yeah.”

Humming thoughtfully, Castiel stuffs a handful of curly fries into her mouth. _She eats like a pig_ , Deanna thinks, staring at her, _I should not be this attracted to someone who eats like that._

Deanna drums her fingers on the table and clears her throat.

“So, uh,” she says, “you sick of Humble yet?”

A desperate little part of her hopes that Castiel will quit. That she'll tell Deanna she doesn't think the position is working out, but that she'd like to spend more time with her. It's one of Deanna's more ridiculous imagined scenarios, and of course, Castiel doesn't do anything of the sort. She just frowns, another handful of fries paused on their way to her mouth.

“I've only had four shifts,” she says, “I don't think I'll be tired of it any time soon.”

“Good,” Deanna replies, forcing a smile and picking up her burger, “wouldn't wanna lose someone with those frosting skills.”

 

***

Halfway through Monday morning, the power cuts out. 

It comes back on twenty minutes later, only to cut out thrice more before noon, and Deanna is getting ready to throttle whichever construction worker it is who keeps disrupting the power lines when the first wave of IT workers turns up.

According to the chatter Deanna overhears, most of the offices in the neighborhood have been losing power, too, and until they can have uninterrupted access to their computers, the workers from the call center have stopped work for the day. Charlie is in the second group of people to come in, and she waves toward Deanna before pointing her coworkers toward the biggest table near the back wall.

“Sorry, and you're welcome,” she says when she comes to the counter, but Deanna is too busy to indulge in their usual banter. The cafe is usually so quiet that even this relatively small rush of customers is overwhelming, and between herself, Pamela and Castiel, they barely manage to keep up with all the orders. Around one in the afternoon Deanna hears her phone ringing in the back room, but she doesn't get a chance to even check the message—Sam, telling her to call back when she gets a chance—until an hour later. 

It stays busy for the rest of the day, and Deanna hangs back until closing time to help Pamela, and goes home via the grocery store. She's not sure she's ever earned pasta and garlic bread more than she has today.

When she finally gets back to her apartment at half past six, she hits the light switch and nothing happens.

“God _damn_ it—”

There's a whir of sound as the fridge and microwave come back to life, as if on queue, and she tries the switch again. The room is bathed in light.

“Well thank fuck for that,” she says, and turns on the heater before making her way to the kitchen to unload all the bags. When it's all done she makes a beeline for the couch, and sinks into the cushions, exhausted. She's been half dozing for ten minutes when she remembers that she needs to call Sam back.

Reaching out, she drags her bag into her lap and digs through with her eyes closed. Then with her eyes open.

Her phone isn't there.

“Ugh,” she groans, remembering taking it out of her bag in the back room at Humble, and after a few seconds of tossing up whether or not she really needs it, she pushes to her feet.

Walking seems like too much effort after a long day, so she heads into the cramped garage. It's been too long since she had an excuse to drive, and she runs a hand over the dusty surface of her Impala before she climbs inside. 

She hits every red light, and the drive to Humble ends up taking as much time as walking. Parking in the back alley, she hurries to the door, casting an uneasy eying the rattling dumpster as slips the key into the lock.

As soon as she's inside, Deanna hears the sounds of something clattering to the floor. A muffled voice mutters something that sounds a lot like _ass._

Moving quietly through the back room, Deanna sees light spilling from the kitchen, and she holds her keys tightly in her hand, raised and ready to fight on the off chance that whoever it is decides to attack her. When she reaches the doorway, though, she finds Castiel crouching beside an upturned mixing bowl. Something red is spread all over the floor, splattered all up the side of the cabinet and Castiel's leg.

  
“Cas?” Deanna says, and Castiel jerks back in surprise, slipping in the puddle on the floor and smacking her head hard against the counter. She groans.

“What are you doing?” Deanna asks her, and Castiel opens her mouth a couple of times before settling on the least plausible response possible.

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, looks like.”

The countertop is covered in vegetables, and there's a cheese grater that doesn't belong here standing at the ready beside a large bell of mozzarella.

“I...” Castiel's fingers twitch against the floor before she seems to give up on lying, “I'm making lasagna.”

“Okay,” Deanna says slowly, making her way further into the kitchen and holding out a hand to help Castiel to her feet, “any particular reason you're doing it here?”

“I don't—“ Castiel exhales, looking away, “there's no kitchen in the hotel room. I got tired of takeout.”

“Hotel room?”

“I lost my apartment. Zachariah owns the building. My name was never on a lease.”

“And he just kicked you out?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus, Cas,” Deanna looks over at Castiel, “I don't want to talk shit about your family or anything, but your brother is an asshole.”

Castiel huffs out a breath through her nose.

“That's one word for it.”

“Are your parents—”

“Gone,” she says simply, “Zachariah is almost fifteen years older than me. He became legal guardian to my sister and I when I was six. He's... he's always been very strong willed. When I told him what I thought of his business practices he reacted... unfavorably.”

“Understatement, Cas. He fired you and made you homeless in the same week.”

“Same day,” Castiel corrects her, and Deanna narrows her eyes.

“You're kidding me.”

“That's why I was a little distracted on my first day. I'd been up half the night packing my things.”

“Okay,” Deanna says, looking down at the spilled tomato sauce, “we'll clean this up, and you can come to my place for dinner.”

“You don't have plans tonight?” Castiel asks, and Deanna feels her neck prickling.

“Nope. Just TV and my couch.”

“That sounds nice.”

“Awesome.”

Ducking into the back room, Deanna grabs the mop and bucket, and Castiel is right there when she turns around.

“Whoa—“

“I'll do it,” she says, taking them from Deanna's hands, fingers brushing, “it shouldn't take long.”

While Castiel mops up the spilled sauce, Deanna puts everything back into Castiel's canvas bag, pockets her cell phone, and within a few minutes they're ready to go.

“You drive here?” Deanna asks, hefting the bag onto her shoulder, and Castiel shakes her head, “C'mon, then. I'm parked out back.”

When Castiel sees her car, she stops walking and looks over at Deanna.

“ _This_ is your car?” she asks.

“This is my baby,” Deanna corrects her.

“Wow. It certainly looks well loved,” Castiel says, making her way to the passenger side and climbing in, “my car is... not quite functional at the moment.”

“What do you drive?”

“It's a Lincoln Continental,” she says, clipping her seat belt on, “'78 model.”

Deanna laughs, shaking her head as she starts the engine.

“What?”

“That's a pimp car, Cas. How... I don't even—”

“It's gold,” Castiel adds, looking out the window, and Deanna could swear she can see a smirk on her face.

“You just keep getting weirder,” she says.

“Thank you.”

 

***

 

It doesn't take long to heat up the pasta and stir through sauce, and the smell of basil and garlic warms the apartment. As Deanna scoops two servings into bowls, it occurs to her that this is the second night in a row that they're having dinner together. _A second date_ , her brain supplies helpfully, and she grits her teeth together. 

Over on the couch, Castiel is sitting up straight, tilting her head to the side as she inspects Deanna's DVD collection from a distance. Even sitting so stiffly, she looks natural here. Like Deanna's apartment is exactly where she should be. Deanna shakes off the thought as she crosses the room.

“You wanna watch something?” she asks, setting their bowls down, and Castiel looks up at her.

“I don't mind.”

The TV ends up on a Cheers rerun, and barely five minutes after they've started eating, halfway through the loud laughter of a studio audience, the power cuts out. Again. Deanna groans.

“ _Seriously_ ,” she says, “why are they even working this late?”

They wait, but the lights are still out a few minutes later, and Castiel asks if Deanna has any candles. It takes everything Deanna has to keep from laughing, because yes she has candles, and no she doesn't want to light them. If she'd been by herself, she'd have done it as soon as the power cut out. She's been deliberately not suggesting it because it'll make this entire thing feel like a date. Which it isn't. So she should be able to light them. _Fuck_.

“Yeah,” she says miserably, “I'll be right back.”

She makes her way into the kitchen blindly, feeling around for the second drawer where she's got a few candles and a book of matches, and brings them back to the coffee table. As she strikes the match, she hopes desperately for the power to come back on. It doesn't. Soon, the room is bathed in a soft orange glow, and when she chances a glance over at Castiel she finds her staring right back. She swallows.

“Is this neighborhood nice to live in?” Castiel asks, and Deanna clears her throat and nods tightly.

“It's not bad,” she says finally, “when the power stays on, anyway.”

“I might look for a place around here.”

“Yeah,” Deanna nods again, and even as she opens her mouth to speak she knows that there are about a million reasons why she shouldn't say what she's about to say, not the least of which being that Castiel is an employee. An employee she already has inappropriate feelings for. Still, without entirely meaning to, she says, “Y'know, I've got a spare room.”

Castiel's eyes just about bug out of her head.

“What?”

“If you want to crash here until you find a place,” Deanna goes on, “or... I mean, if you want, you could just... I mean, I've kind of been thinking about getting someone to rent out the other room, anyway, so...”

“You're not using the space?”

_This is your chance to take it back_ , she thinks, _so fucking take it back._

“Nah,” she says, and wants to choke herself, “all I've got in there is the foldout Sam and Jess use when they come up from Palo Alto, but that'd fit in the garage. Besides, I kind of hate the quiet. It'd be nice to have some company, y'know?”

“Thank you, Dee. I'll think about it.”

“Don't sweat it.”

A few hours later, when Deanna pulls up outside the hotel that Castiel has been calling home for the past couple of weeks, Castiel looks over at her.

“If you're sure about your offer, I think... I'd like to take that spare room.”

“Awesome,” she croaks, and Castiel smiles as she gets out of the car.

As she waits for Castiel to go through the hotel doors, she tells herself she doesn't know why she's so hell bent on helping her. Tells herself it's not because of her eyes. It's not because of her voice or her wit or her rare smile that isn't quite a smile. It's not because of how her mouth forms some words all to one side, or the way she sounds when she swears under her breath, or the fact that she can't seem to eat without ending up with cheeks bulging out like a squirrel. It's certainly not because of the fluttery feeling that she puts in Deanna's stomach whenever she squeezes past her in the kitchen, or the fact that she can carry herself with such grace when she's fighting.

It's none of that. 

She's helping because Castiel needs help, and she's a helpful person. That's all this is. That's definitely all this is.

Easing back onto the road, the hotel's lights fading in her rearview, Deanna gulps hard.

“I'm fucked,” she mutters to herself, “I'm completely and utterly fucked.”


	4. Blue Curacao

The next two days are horrible.

Not because they're horrible, but because they're amazing, and Deanna knows she's screwed.

Every little thing Castiel does makes her pulse stutter in her chest, and more than once she catches herself daydreaming about what it might be like to link their fingers together, to wake up side by side. The fantasies aren't even sexual, just appallingly sweet, and Deanna wonders how the hell she managed to get herself into this mess.

When Castiel brushes past her to get something from the fridge in Humble's kitchen on Wednesday morning, trailing the sweet smell of vanilla in her wake, Deanna forces herself to breathe through her mouth and moves to the opposite end of the counter. She's got to get past this. That or tell Castiel she's sorry, but she can't move in after all. The words refuse to come.

Instead, when Deanna opens her mouth, she says:

“So when are you thinking you'll move in?”

She's weak. She kind of hates herself.

Looking up from where she's crouched in front of the fridge, Castiel chews thoughtfully on her lip for a moment.

“Would Friday be alright?”

“Friday is perfect. I can help you move your stuff if you want.”

“Most of it is in storage,” she says, turning back to pull out a punnet of cherries, “if you don't mind meeting me at the locker it would save me an extra trip.”

“Sure thing. Just text me the address.”

“Thank you, Dee.”

“Don't mention it.”

Castiel returns her focus to the task at hand, and after a much longer time than is reasonable, Deanna does the same.

 _Why did I ever think this was a good idea?_ she asks herself, watching Castiel fold the cherries through dark chocolate cake batter. Despite the question occurring to her at least twenty more times before the end of her shift, she can't find a single damn answer.

* * *

 

“I fucked up,” she says as soon as Benny walks in on Thursday, and he flinches in surprise, having not seen her sitting in the dark cafe.

She's already been here for an hour—not that she had anything to do—and the coffee she's barely touched has gone cold on the table in front of her. Benny switches on the overhead lights and gives her a once over.

“Do I even want to know?” he asks, shucking his coat and sticking it under the counter.

“Probably not.”

“In that case, let me have a coffee first. You want another one?”

Deanna nods, holding out her mug, and he takes it.

“You're gonna want to slap me,” she adds after a moment, and Benny pauses with his hand on the espresso machine, “hell, I want to slap me.”

“Then let me make it Irish,” he jokes.

In the end, Benny won't stop laughing. It's already been over an hour since she told him the whole awful story, and every now and then he glances at her and starts chuckling again.

“You're an asshole,” she tells him, and he snorts at her, shaking his head as he mixes a bowl of frosting.

“You'd laugh if it were me and you know it,” he points out, and she glares at him, “don't act so pissy.”

“Hmmph,” she says, and ignores him as best she can.

Right before he leaves for the day, Benny makes the suggestion that she go out tonight, work out a little tension before Castiel moves in. He waggles his eyebrows.

“Yeah,” she agrees, leaning heavily against the counter, “you might be onto something, there.”

Typically, though, as soon as she walks through the doors of the bar a few blocks from her apartment, she runs into the source of her frustration. Castiel, clad in a leather jacket and a navy tank top that makes Deanna feel like she might actually die, is sitting there at the bar, nursing a neon blue cocktail in a tall glass.

 _I should leave before she sees me_ , Deanna thinks. But because she's got no self-preservation instincts, she ignores herself and slips onto an empty stool to Castiel's right.

“Hey, Cas,” Deanna says when Castiel glaces over, “come here often?”

The moment the words slip out of her mouth she wants to drag them back in. Castiel just smiles.

“Deanna,” she says, and doesn't go on.

It's far too long before Deanna realizes that they're both just sitting here staring at each other, and she clears her throat, looking away and waving for the bartender. He nods in acknowledgment as he counts out a woman's change.

“You meeting someone?” Deanna asks, and Castiel shakes her head, taking a long sip through her straw.

“Apparently not.”

“What, did you get stood up?” Deanna jokes.

“Yes."

Embarrassment prickles under Deanna's skin, and she shifts uncomfortably in her seat. _Real fucking smooth_ , she thinks.

“Oh," she says with a grimace, "Sorry.”

“It's no bother,” Castiel says with a shrug, “I wasn't particularly interested in her, anyway. It's just been a while since I've tried dating anyone, so when she asked...”

Castiel shrugs again, turning back to her drink while Deanna's brain practically screams she's single and into women, holy crap you might actually have a chance. She politely tells her brain to shut the fuck up, and finally manages to reply, “Her loss, then,” before being rescued by the bartender asking what she wants. She very nearly says Cas.

As the night wears on, Castiel drinks her under the table, seemingly unaffected by the half dozen cocktails she orders. By half past eleven, her lower lip is stained blue with curacao. Deanna has never much liked blue curacao but right now, as they stand to leave, she's struck by the ardent desire to lean over and taste it. She tries not to stare as she holds open the door.

“Shame you're not moving in until tomorrow,” she hears herself saying as they make their way into the cool, drizzly air, “would've saved you getting a cab.”

Squinting at her, Castiel adjusts her bag on her shoulder.

"You're coming with me," she says, and turns to wave at an approaching taxi. For a few brief seconds, Deanna's brain shuts down completely. Luckily, before she's had a chance to make a fool of herself, Castiel goes on, "I'll have the taxi drop you off first. You can't walk back alone at this time of night."

“I'll be fine," Deanna insists, glad the dark street is hiding her embarrassment at misinterpreting Castiel's first words.

“No.”

“No?” Deanna repeats as the cab pulls up, “you're kind of bossy.”

"It's on the way,” Castiel says, pulling open the back door and nodding for Deanna to get in.

It isn't on the way at all—Deanna knows, having driven Castiel back to the hotel on Monday night—but she doesn't argue. Just slips inside and wishes there were less room in the seat so she might get away with being pressed to Castiel's side. As it is, there's a respectable two feet between them. Deanna slumps toward the middle, anyway, her hand splayed out over the worn upholstery.

“Sorry again about your date,” she says as the taxi turns into her street, and Castiel glances down to her own lap, a half smile playing across her lips.

“I had a better time with you than I would've had with Daphne, I'm sure,” she says, then looks back at the driver, “just here is fine.”

“What?”

“You're home.”

“Oh.”

Deanna blinks, sitting up straighter, and looks outside to see the dull red brick of her apartment building. Before she knows it, she's pushing her key into the lock, and the taxi's tail lights are disappearing up around the bend.

* * *

 

She finds three missed calls and two clippy text messages waiting for her when she goes to plug in her cell, and with a wave of guilt it occurs to her that she never got around to calling her brother back. She grimaces as she presses call, flopping back on her bed.

It almost rings out before Sam picks up.

“What the hell, Dee?” he says, “it's like midnight.”

“Yeah, sorry. Was out with Cas.”

“Who?”

He's frowning; Deanna can tell. She likes to think this is payback for him calling so early last Friday morning.

“The new girl,” she tells him, “Castiel.”

“The weird one? You're going out with her now?”

“She's a friend,” Deanna says, and even she can hear how defensive she sounds.

“Right.”

Deanna clears her throat.

“Uh, funny story, actually,” she says, “she's um... moving into your old room.”

For a long moment, there's silence. It's the kind that Deanna is ninety percent certain is accompanied with the constipated look of judgment that her brother has directed toward her for half their adult lives.

“She got kicked out of her old place,” Deanna explains before Sam can ask, “and it's temporary. Probably temporary.”

“Right.”

“Quit judging me.”

“I'm not!”

 _Liar_ , Deanna thinks, but drops the subject.

“What were you calling for, anyway?”

“Wedding stuff,” he says, “but I was almost asleep. Can you call me tomorrow?”

“Yeah, no problem. 'Night, Sammy.”

Once the call is over, Deanna presses her eyes tightly shut.

Squeezing the bridge of her nose, she tries to convince herself that it's going to be fine, and spends the entire night dealing with the sinking feeling that she's made things incredibly complicated for her future self. **  
**

* * *

At eleven the next morning, Deanna pulls up beside Castiel's Lincoln at a storage unit.

Her clothes are all crammed into the back seat, along with her computer and fencing gear, and as she walks past it Deanna could swear she can see a fucking saxophone in there. There's no limit, apparently, to Castiel's hobbies.

“Thanks again for doing this,” Castiel says when she sees her, and Deanna waves off the gratitude.

“If someone didn't help me out back when I needed it I'd probably be living out of my car right now. I'm just paying it forward you know?” she smiles, hoping it doesn't look forced as she follows her through the open roller door of Castiel's unit, “just promise not to murder me in my sleep and we'll call it even.”

“Why would I do that?”

“...the promise or the murder?”

Castiel looks at her with narrowed eyes before catching the joke and smirking.

“Do you think the rest will fit?” she asks, gesturing to her dismantled bed frame, mattress, and an assortment of books.

“Everything but the mattress. We can tie that to the roof pretty easy, though,” Deanna says, picking up one of the books from the nearest pile—The Beekeeper's Bible—and turning it over to read the blurb before looking back up at Castiel, “Beekeeping?”

“It's very interesting,” Castiel tells her, and without any further explanation, she starts carrying things to Deanna's car.

“Alright then.”

By the time they're done, Deanna has noticed eight other books on beekeeping, two on sleight of hand magic, and an anthology of thirteenth century Japanese poetry. While she waits for Castiel to lock the unit and return the key to the scruffy attendant she reads the instructions on a disappearing coin illusion.

“That one is much easier than it looks,” Castiel says when she comes back.

“You're a dork,” Deanna tells her.

Castiel just nods in agreement, seemingly unruffled by this assessment, and climbs into her car. It rattles when she starts it up, spewing black clouds from it's exhaust pipe. She pulls a face at Deanna through the window.

“I'm lucky it's even running today,” she says.

“I can take a look at it for you sometime if you want,” Deanna says, bouncing her own keys in her hand, “kinda just sounds like it needs a tune up.”

“You can do that?”

“My dad taught me a few things,” she says with a shrug, and heads toward her own car, pausing to send Castiel a wink and a cheesy grin as she adds; “I'll see you at home.”

All in all, it takes them around four hours to move everything and rebuild the bed frame, and a little after three in the afternoon, Deanna slumps down onto the couch with a groan, twisting the cap off her beer.

“Remind me never to be helpful again,” she says, cracking her neck, and Castiel huffs out a laugh at her, sitting down at the opposite end.

The rest of the day passes swiftly, lost in conversation and TV, and by the time the sun goes down Deanna thinks maybe she'll be able to cope with this after all. She's just offered to go pick up some takeout from the Thai restaurant a few blocks over when her cell rings.

“Crap,” she says, picking it up from the table to see Sam's name flashing over the screen, “I gotta take this.”

“I'll go,” Castiel says, pushing to her feet and cracking her joints, “it's the one opposite the arcade, right?”

“That's the one.”

With a nod, Castiel grabs her coat and her bag and disappears out the door, and Deanna answers her cell, settling back against the couch to listen to her brother stress over the sudden cancellation of the wedding DJ.

She's just finished convincing him that this is a sign that he and Jess should hire a band instead when he abruptly changes topics.

“Oh, by the way," Sam says, "Jess wanted me to ask you--"

"I'm _looking_ for a dress," Deanna cuts him off, "I swear. Jess and Mom have both been on my back about it, I don't need--"

Sam's laughter rolls down the line.

"I don't give a crap about the dress. Wear sweats and a helmet if you want, who cares."

In the background, Deanna hears Jess say something in protest to this, and Sam laughs again.

"Anyway, that's not what I was about to say. Jess is making the placecards for the tables this weekend."

"Okay..."

"And we still don't have your dates name?” he says slowly, as if she's dim, and Deanna has the vague memory of ticking a little box on her wedding invitation. Shit.

“Um,” Deanna says, hoping she might be able to talk her way out of it, “I'm bringing a date?”

There's silence for a long moment, and Deanna wonders how it is that she can always tell exactly which face it is her brother is pulling at moments like this. This is likely the one that equals slow and painful death.

“You replied to the invitation with a tick next to the plus one,” Sam says, and Deanna grimaces, “and Jess has organized all the seating to include your date. Who you're _bringing_.”

“Um." 

“Dee.”

“I'll... uh. I'll get back to you?”

Sam sighs loudly.

“Tomorrow, Dee. At the absolute latest.”

“I will.”

By the time Castiel gets home, carrying far too much takeout for two people, Deanna has called the only three exes she's still talking to—Lisa is busy, Tessa is seeing someone new, and Victor is, evidently, still too hung up on her to consider a one-time date—and is no closer to a solution.

“I didn't know what you liked,” Castiel says, dumping the contents of the bags on the coffee table, “so I just got some of everything.”

The words slip out before she has a chance to reconsider them. It's getting to be a bad habit.

“Are you free next weekend?” she asks, and Castiel pauses with a box of green curry chicken in her hands.

“Yes,” she says, “I think so. Why?”

“Apparently I told Jess I had a date for the wedding.”

“And?” Castiel asks.

“I don't have a date for the wedding.”

“That's a problem?”

“Well, yeah. Kind of. She's planned out seats and organized the crap out of everything, and now she wants to know what name to put on the placecard. So...” Deanna trails off, gesturing vaguely toward Castiel, who squints at her for a moment before a flicker of understanding crosses her face.

“Deanna, are you asking me to be your date for your brother's wedding?”

 _Yes_ , Deanna thinks, and swallows down against the rising panic in her chest.

“I'm, uh... I'm asking you to do me a solid so Jess doesn't strangle me for leaving a weird gap at the table.”

“Oh,” Castiel nods, looking back at the box of chicken in her hands, “I see.”

“I'd just bring Benny, but he doesn't get along with Sam at all, and nobody else is free. That kind of leaves me with the option of you or, like... an escort service.”

Castiel glances over and arches her brow.

“I'm flattered you asked me first,” she says dryly.

“I figure you're cheaper,” Deanna jokes, and when Castiel laughs at her she grins, the weird tension broken, “So can you come? We'd leave Thursday afternoon, drive back Saturday.”

Castiel hesitates briefly, weighing something in her mind, before finally responding with a nod.

“I can.”

“Thanks,” Deanna breathes, unlocking her phone to text Sam, “you're a lifesaver.”

She taps out her message— **I'm bringing Castiel** —while Castiel heads into to the kitchen for cutlery and bowls. Sam replies almost instantly **I thought you said she was just a friend ;)** and Deanna grits her teeth together to stop from growling at her cell phone.

 **She IS just a friend** , she replies, and then before Sam can respond she sends another; **So don't go putting ideas in Mom's head, asshole. I'm a lone wolf and I'm staying that way.**

Castiel returns, handing over a fork and an empty bowl, and Deanna puts her cell on silent to avoid having to respond to any more of Sam's messages.

“I should have asked,” Castiel says as she sits back down, “where is the wedding? I'm assuming California?”

“Yeah, it's at some country house outside Redding. Jess' parents own it, so we don't have to worry about finding someplace to stay.”

“Ah, good.”

“Seriously, Cas, I can't thank you enough” Deanna says, picking up a container of pad thai and scooping a few forkfuls into her bowl, “Jess would've killed me if I fucked up her seating plan.”

“It'll be my first vacation in years, and an excuse to wear my favorite dress,” Castiel says, digging into the green curry, “no thanks are necessary.”

Sending her a smile, Deanna settles in against the cushions, half watching Voyager while she eats. This, she thinks, might work out after all.

* * *

 

The first few days of sharing the apartment go without a hitch.

Castiel is a quiet housemate. She cleans up after herself, keeps similar hours to Deanna, and is happy to watch whatever Deanna does on TV. Her taste in food is close enough to Deanna's own that they end up agreeing to split the cooking and groceries straight down the middle.

The saxophone Deanna spotted on Friday doesn't make an appearance, and while she's relieved that there hasn't been any loud music practice since Castiel moved in, she's still more than a little curious about it. She decides not to ask.

It's as she takes a shower on Tuesday night that it occurs to Deanna that it feels more like living with someone than having a roommate. She squashes the thought, pushes it to the back of her mind and walking from the bathroom to her room, towel over her head as she dries off her hair.

She's in her room, digging through her underwear drawer for a matching set—sometimes it's nice to feel put-together, after all—when she hears the front door slam.

“Hello, Dee,” Castiel calls out, and Deanna glances toward the hallway.

“Heya Cas!” she shouts back, pushing the door closed before Castiel gets an eyeful.

Having lived alone for so long, it's become a habit to walk from her bathroom to her bedroom naked. It's one she'll have to break.

This time, she was lucky, but if she'd walked out thirty seconds later Castiel would have seen every last square inch of ink on her body, and if she ever does, Deanna wants it to be because she wants to. Not that she's entertaining any fantasies about that, of course. She's been studiously forcing herself not to think such thoughts since Friday, and though it's been difficult, she's a little impressed with her own perseverance.

Living with Castiel has been easy, and she's sure that given a few weeks she'll be able to successfully rid herself of all traces of the stupid crush and enjoy a good, solid friendship with her housemate. Hanging out with her at Sam's wedding will only help with that, surely.

She dresses, and when she finds Castiel in the kitchen a few minutes later, every last thought of getting past the crush goes right out the window.

Earlier this afternoon, Deanna had texted her— **you want pizza tonight?** —and received a reply in the affirmative. She'd been planning to order in. Apparently Castiel had other ideas.

“How was your day?” Castiel says over her shoulder as she kneads a ball of pizza dough, and Deanna blinks a few times before answering.

“Uh, good. It was good.”

Once, when she'd just graduated from culinary school, Deanna had invited a guy she'd being dating over for dinner and made a whole big show of how sensual cooking could be. Right now, Castiel is blowing her performance out of the water and she's not even trying.

Her fingers dance over the dough, nimble and sure, and Deanna can't stop looking at them. It's getting to be kind of a problem.

She can't stop herself from thinking about those fingers. About what they could do. About how they might play over her body and knead into her flesh. How they could stretch and pull at her, roll over her skin, slip slide soft over her thighs, her—

“Do you think this is wet enough?”

Snapping back to reality, Deanna feels heat on her cheeks as she raises her eyes.

“What?” she croaks.

“It seems too dry,” Castiel says, looking back at the dough, and Deanna bites down on the inside of her cheek.

She steps forward to look at the dough in question.

“Needs olive oil,” she says, “just a little.”

“I thought so.”

“You need me to do anything?”

“Can you make pesto?”

“That I can,” she says, glad for the distraction, and sets to work chopping up pine nuts.

It only takes her a few minutes to prepare, and when she's done she raises a spoon, holding it out for Castiel to take.

“What do you think?”

It occurs to her immediately that this was a terrible idea, possibly her worst one yet, because Castiel's hands are slick with olive oil, and instead of taking it she just ducks her head, lips closing around the spoon. Deanna feels her stomach tense when Castiel's eyes flicker closed.

She hums thoughtfully as she pulls away, licking her lower lip before pulling it between her teeth and nodding decisively.

“Perfect,” she says, turning her attention back to the dough, and Deanna wonders vaguely how much of an overreaction it would be to just set herself on fire.

* * *

 

Later that night, after gorging themselves on home made pizza, Castiel disappears into the bathroom to shower and Deanna curls up on one end of the couch with a mess of magazines—donated by Andrea—stacked in a haphazard pile beside her. With only a few days until the wedding, she's still without the required dress. This, she hopes, will help her decide what she wants.

She's dejectedly flipping through the pages of last months _Elle_ when Castiel wanders back out, dressed in loose-fitting drawstring pants and a tank top that Deanna tries not to appreciate too much. Combing her damp hair, she comes to sit at the other end.

“What are you reading?”

“Not really reading,” she says, turning the magazine in her hands around to show her, “I'm looking for inspiration, I guess? Figure I can try to find something after work tomorrow.”

Castiel tilts her head to one side, looking at the spread.

“None of those will suit you,” she says after a moment, and Deanna flips to the next page with a snort.

“No shit.”

“You should wear maroon,” Castiel goes on, “or green. You look good in both.”

“Oh. Uh, thanks.”

“How conservative is your family? And Jess's family?”

“Not remotely. Why?”

“I was going to suggest something like that,” she leans over the couch back and points at a dress with a swooping neckline, “but your tattoos would be visible, and if your fam—”

“When did you see my tattoos?”

Castiel's eyes widen, flushing red all the way down her neck. She hesitates to answer. Deanna loves the sight of that blush but she doesn't trust it in the slightest.

“Today,” she says finally, "when you came out of the bathroom."

Deanna feels her stomach drop.

“Oh god,” she hides her face in her hands, “I'm a _flasher_.”

“I didn't—as soon as I realized I looked away but I, um... I saw..." Castiel bites down on her lower lip, avoiding eye contact, "it was an accident. You didn't know I was home yet."

“So when you slammed the front door—?”

“I had already been home a few minutes,” Castiel confirms, and Deanna groans, “but I worried you might walk out of your room again, so...”

“How much did you see?” Deanna asks, peeking out from behind her fingers, and Castiel opens her mouth to reply. Then shuts it.

“Oh _god_ ,” Deanna repeats, “you saw everything. Jesus Christ, just kill me.”

“You've got nothing to be ashamed of,” Castiel says helpfully.

Deanna just groans again.

“I'll... leave you to it, then.”

Castiel is halfway out the door when she pauses, turning around.

“May I ask,” she starts, a little awkwardly, “what the symbol on your breast is?”

Deanna sinks further into the couch, willing herself to disappear.

“Never mind,” Castiel says, shaking her head, “it's... I understand.”

Deanna waits until she hears Castiel's bedroom door close and retreats to her own room to hide for the rest of the night, because Castiel has seen her naked.

Castiel, who is into women and is single and gorgeous and her goddamn employee has seen her naked.

As Deanna tries to go to sleep, it's all she can think of. That, of course, and the fact that there's only a few feet and a couple of sheets of drywall separating them. Deanna ignores the tight feeling in her stomach for as long as humanly possible.

She has to sleep. Right now, as things stand, that's not going to happen.

It's with the kind of practiced silence that only comes from having once shared this wall with a sibling that she brings herself to climax, and when the aftershocks finally stop rolling through her, curling her toes in the sheets, she catches her breath and sleeps.

In the morning, it's easy to convince herself that it really wasn't a big deal. Hell, the apartment is small. Someone probably would have ended up being caught unawares eventually, so it's probably a good thing that they got it out of the way nice and early.

The day is less awkward than she anticipated.

Pamela gives her a knowing look when she arrives, but she doesn't say anything, and by the end of Castiel's shift Deanna has decided that she's over it. She's mainly lying to herself. Luckily for her, she's had plenty of practice in the art of denial, and it doesn't take long before she's accepted no big deal as her new truth.

After work she makes the dreaded trip to the nearest mall, and if she takes Castiel's advice on which color dress to buy, that's nobodies business but her own.

* * *

It'll take about ten hours to drive to Redding, and they head out of Seattle at one in the afternoon on Thursday. It's uncharacteristically sunny as they leave the city. Deanna jokes that the weather is preparing them for California.

They stop in Salem to fuel up the Impala and eat ice cream cones from the gas station while they stretch their legs. Castiel bites the end off her cone, and simply says “What?” when Deanna looks at her like she's crazy.

“Do you want me to drive for a while?” Castiel asks, licking drips of mint chocolate chip from her wrist and squinting at Deanna over the truck stop picnic table.

“I don't really let anyone else drive my car.”

“Really?”

“I mean, I'm sure you're a good driver,” Deanna says, scrunching up the paper from her ice cream and tossing it toward the trashcan, “I just...”

Deanna trails off, trying to find the best way to explain why she feels weird about letting other people behind the wheel, but Castiel tilts her head a little to the side and promptly figures it out on her own.

“It was your father's car,” she says simply, “it's how you keep him with you.”

“Yeah,” Deanna says on a breath, a little shocked that Castiel managed to hit the nail squarely on it's head, “something like that.”

Castiel smiles, small and sincere, and pushes to her feet. Within five minutes they're back on the road with the windows down and the stereo quiet and constant over the thrum of tires on asphalt.

She glances over at Castiel sitting so comfortably in the passenger seat, head tilted back and hair whipping into knots, and feels a kind of peace at the sight.

_I wonder if Dad would have liked her._

The thought comes unbidden, but once it's occurred to her she can't stop thinking about it. She wants to think he would have, but you never could tell with John. Besides, it's been more than ten years since he died. As much as she hates to admit it, a lot of the time she can't quite remember what he was like.

She readjusts her grip on the wheel, and doesn't stop driving again until both their stomachs are rumbling a little after eight o'clock.

When they roll into Medford, pulling up at a roadside diner on the outskirts of town, the sky is just starting to turn orange.

It's quiet inside. A single group of teenagers is crowded around a table in the back corner; an elderly couple by the door. Deanna heads for a booth halfway between them that looks out over the parking lot and the patch of trees behind it.

“Hey, check it out,” Deanna says as she sits, pointing toward the kitchen where a specials board is nailed to the wall, “best shakes in Oregon.”

“I doubt that's been officially verified,” Castiel says, sliding into the opposite side and picking up a menu.

“We'll see.”

The sun is just starting to sink out of view, blindingly bright beyond the parkland, and once she's decided on her order Deanna looks up to see Castiel lit up in pink. Her breath catches for a moment, and she swallows, looking back down at her hands. She's still trying to convince herself that Castiel isn't really that beautiful when their waitress walks over.

“What can I get you?”

“I'll have the cheeseburger with everything,” Deanna says, “onion rings on the side, and a cherry shake.”

The waitress nods, jotting it down. Castiel folds her menu closed and slides it over the table.

“I'll have the same,” she says.

“Shouldn't be long,” the waitress tells them, sticking her pencil back behind her ear and heading back to the kitchen, shoes clicking over the tile.

“Changed your mind about the shake, then?” Deanna asks.

Castiel shrugs.

“I couldn't decide what I wanted, and you usually seem to have good taste, so...”

“Always, Cas. I _always_ have good taste.”

“We'll see,” Castiel says with a smirk, teasing her, and Deanna feels her pulse speed up at the sight.

The cheeseburgers, when they arrive, are too big to pick up. The shakes are average at best. Castiel has the good grace not to say I told you so.

They're back in the car by nine, and with a soundtrack made up of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin and Cream, they continue south.

Halfway through _Changes_ , Deanna hears Castiel humming the tune under her breath, and cracks into a grin, but she doesn't say anything. Just sings along, too, a warm feeling tingling down to her fingertips.

“Only an hour to go,” she tells Castiel when they pass Mount Shasta, and though they don't talk much after that, the quiet is comfortable.

* * *

 

As she finally eases the Impala off the road in Redding, Deanna leans forward over the wheel and whistles through her teeth. The three story Georgian at the end of the long, tree-lined drive is by no stretch of the imagination a country house. It's a goddamn mansion.

“Jess' parents aren't kidding around.”

It's nearing midnight, but Mary greets them at the door. She pulls Deanna into a warm hug.

“You didn't have to wait up,” Dee tells her, and Mary scoffs.

“Couldn't sleep until I knew you got here safely,” she says, pulling back and pushing Deanna's hair over her ear, “I missed you.”

“Yeah, you too, Mom,” Deanna says with a smile.

Mary beams, her eyes lighting up, and looks over at Castiel, standing a little awkwardly behind Deanna.

“And you must be Cas,” she says, and pulls her into a hug that Castiel looks very taken aback by, “it's wonderful to meet you.”

“Likewise, Mrs Winchester.”

“Please, honey, call me Mary. Come on, I'll show you to your room. Hope you girls don't mind sharing—it's kind of a full house.”

Mary leads them to the rear of the the house, over glossy floorboards and dark patterned carpets, past a high-ceilinged dining room and up two flights of stairs. When they reach the top floor she presses a finger to her lips and treads more lightly until finally arriving at a half-open door.

She pushes it wide, gesturing for them to enter.

It's bigger than Deanna's room at home. Spacious and airy. Deanna wouldn't be surprised if the art on the walls alone cost more than her entire apartment. The plush queen at the room's center is fitted with shiny gold-threaded covers, and by the window is a velvet-cushioned daybed, blankets folded neatly at one end.

“There are only two rooms with singles,” Mary explains apologetically as they toss their bags down beside the open closet, “and Jess' cousins took those.”

She gestures toward the daybed, speaking through a yawn.

“It's not too narrow once you take the cushions off.”

“It's fine, Mom, thanks,” Deanna tells her, glancing around to see another door that leads into an en suite bathroom, “more than fine. This place is insane.”

“It's definitely a lot more decadent than I'd expected,” Mary agrees with a quiet laugh.

Moving closer to the wide window, Deanna and Castiel look out over a vast expanse of manicured garden, framed by maples and tall quaking aspen. The moon is draped in cloud, but in it's dull glow Deanna can make out a square, white marquee, standing out in the inky dark.

“That's for the reception,” Mary explains, and Deanna turns to look at her, “the ceremony will be in the other garden.”

“There's another garden?”

“There are several,” Mary says. She leans in to kiss Deanna on the cheek, “I'll let you two settle in. Breakfast is at eight.”

“Night, Mom.”

“Goodnight, Mary.”

With a smile, Mary leaves the room, pulling the door closed behind her.

Deanna yawns, stretching, and Castiel disappears into the bathroom. By the time she comes back out, barefoot and loose-haired, Deanna has the bed made and is hanging her dress in the closet.

“I'll take the daybed,” she says, scooping up her pajamas from on top of her bag, and making her way to the bathroom. As she passes, Castiel looks at the bundle in her arms with a lopsided smile.

“Are those pies?”

Deanna pointedly eyes Castiel's own shorts in return.

“Are those _fairies_?”

“Angels, actually,” Castiel says, turning to show her the white wings printed on the back of the black tank top, and Deanna snorts.

“Cute.”

Slipping into the bathroom, Deanna glances back to see Castiel pulling a pale blue dress from her suitcase, shaking it a little and hanging it up beside her own maroon one. The sight of the two dresses side by side makes Deanna's heart thud hard, and she bites down on her lip, closing the door.

When she comes back out, she's relieved to find the light is out.

Castiel is already sleeping.


	5. It's Definitely Something

Early in the morning, one of Jess' young cousins starts howling in the hallway.

Deanna has already been awake for more than an hour—as usual, her body clock refuses to let her sleep like a normal person—but a tantrum is still not something she wants to hear before she's had her coffee.

A thin sliver of daylight is slicing into the room through a crack in the curtain, and when the toddler thunders past their door, followed by his harried-sounding mother telling him to be quiet, Castiel makes a quiet sound of protest against her pillow.

“I guess that's our cue to get up,” Deanna says.

“What time is it?”

With a yawn, Deanna leans down to grab her cell from where it's plugged in beside the daybed, squinting at the bright screen.

“Almost seven,” she says, and rubs her eyes with the heel of her hand, “you want first shower?”

“You go,” Castiel says, still a little muffled by her blanket and pillow.

Deanna stretches, pushing to her feet, then pulls the curtains wide, bathing the room in bright sunlight. Castiel groans.

“It's a _beautiful_ day,” Deanna sings obnoxiously, making her way over to her bag, and laughs when Castiel opens one eye to glare at her. As she slips into the bathroom, she doesn't miss the brief quirk of Castiel's lips that says the glare is entirely false.

They head downstairs a little before eight, freshly showered and in comfortable clothes before they have to get ready for the wedding. The dining room they'd passed the night before is full of shouting kids, two stressed dads, a tired-eyed teenage girl who is leaning heavily against Jess' brother's side while he eyes a platter of bacon at the table's center, and a woman whose voice Deanna recognizes from the hallway earlier. They're halfway through the door when Deanna hears footsteps from up the hall.

“Morning, girls,” Mary calls out, beaming as she makes her way toward them, carrying a huge tray of toast, “did you sleep well?”

“Like baby logs,” Deanna tells her.

“Do you want help with that?” Castiel asks, gesturing toward the tray in her hands, and Mary shakes her head with a smile.

“No thanks, I've got it. There's plates for the both of you keeping warm in the kitchen. Figured you wouldn't want to sit with all the toddlers.”

As if to illustrate her point, one of the toddlers in question starts wailing.

“I have no idea why you'd think that,” Deanna tells her, and Mary chuckles, heading toward the dining room.

To Deanna's relief, the kitchen is much quieter than the dining room.

Sam is sitting at a small table with a plate of eggs and toast, tapping his toe restlessly against the tile. His hair resembles a birdsnest after a hurricane, and Deanna smirks from the doorway.

“Who let the sasquatch inside?”

At the sound of her voice, Sam turns and breaks into a wide grin. The nerves seem to leave him for a moment, and he's on his feet, hurrying across the room to meet her for a hug, lifting her off her feet a little in the process.

“Jesus, Sammy, it hasn't been that long,” she laughs, but squeezes him back just as tightly. It's been just shy of six months since they were in the same city, and despite her teasing she's missed him. When he finally puts her down, he looks misty-eyed and buzzed.

“So,” Sam says, looking over at Castiel, “I'm guessing you're the mysterious new girl that Dee won't shut up about.”

He sticks out a hand, and Castiel's eyebrows raise as she shakes it. Deanna sends Sam a stink-eye strong enough that she's surprised he doesn't flinch.

“I'm not mysterious,” Castiel says, glancing at Deanna, “what have you been telling him?”

“Only good things,” Sam cuts in, before Deanna can reply, “it's great to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Castiel says, relaxing a little.

When Sam heads over to the oven to take out their breakfast, Deanna decides to let him get away with his annoying younger brother schtick. He is the one handing her a plate of bacon, after all.

Mary comes back just as they're sitting down to eat, and makes herself comfortable at the table beside Sam.

“So where's Jess?” Deanna asks, shoveling a forkful of scrambled eggs into her mouth and grinning when Mary frowns at her talking through them, “she come to her senses or something?”

Sam rolls his eyes, laughing.

“She didn't this one to accidentally see her dress,” Mary explains, nodding toward Sam, “so she and her mom and the bridesmaids are all staying in the guesthouse.”

“This place has a _guesthouse_?” Deanna asks, brow raising, “Jesus, what else? A swimming pool? Stables?”

“Yep,” Sam says simply, taking a sip of his orange juice, “and there's an orchard, too.”

“Holy crap,” Deanna says, and a chunk of egg falls from her mouth, landing on the table with a splat. She grimaces, accepting the napkin held out by Mary, and wipes it up as Sam pulls a face. He leans toward Castiel over the table.

“Are you regretting coming with her yet?” he asks.

“No,” Castiel replies, sipping her coffee, but before Deanna has a chance to flip Sam off for trying to make Castiel go along with him, she adds; “but then I've always had a soft spot for animals.”

Mary laughs, slapping her hand over her mouth to muffle the sound. Sam grins wide.

“Alright,” Sam tells Castiel, leaning back in his seat, “you I like. You can stay.”

“Neither of you talk to me for the rest of the morning,” Deanna says, picking up her toast and pointing it at them for emphasis, “ganging up on me like a couple of jerks. I'm telling the priest.”

 

* * *

 

 

A half hour later finds Deanna in the bathroom, wriggling into her maroon dress. Smoothing the skirt down over her legs, she thinks about how Sam and Cas had got along; how Mary had beamed while Castiel told her about working at Humble. The entire breakfast had been comfortable and easy. Just like everything with Castiel so far, she just clicked with Deanna's family. It was almost as though she'd always been there, slipping quietly into a space that Deanna isn't sure how she never noticed it before.

She chews her lip thoughtfully and starts on her hair. It's far too short to do much of anything with, so after a moments deliberation she curls the ends a little and pins her bangs so they don't fall into her eyes.

Turning to check herself out in the mirror, she juts out one hip and sends herself a wink.

 _Not half bad_ , she thinks, and pulls open the door, stepping back out into the bedroom.

At it's center, attempting to fasten the final button at the back of her neck, Castiel looks like she stepped out of a magazine. Her dress is a pale, robins egg blue with an intricate lace bodice that gives way to knee-length tulle, and if Deanna thought she looked good before, she doesn't even have words for this.

“Wow,” she says aloud, and feels her face heating up immediately. Glancing over at her, Castiel makes no response. Just gestures to the difficult button.

“Could you—?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure,” Deanna crosses the room to help her, pushing Castiel's long hair out of the way before quickly fastening it.

Up this close she can smell Castiel's perfume, sweet like honeysuckle and peaches. Deanna swallows and steps back.

“All done,” she says, and Castiel turns to look at her properly.

“I told you you'd look good in a dress.”

“Yeah?” Deanna tugs at the hem, “it's not too short?”

“Turn around,” Castiel tells her, and with a roll of her eyes, Deanna does.

When she finishes turning, she sees Castiel's gaze traveling slowly up her body, over the fitted skirt and the sweetheart neckline, down again over the little cap sleeves. Deanna ignores the tremor of nerves that the look puts in her stomach. Castiel meets her eyes. They seem to glitter when she smiles.

“It's not too short.”

 

* * *

 

 

The ceremony starts at midday, and it's something right out of a cheesy romantic comedy—right down to the sappy music and uncooperative pre-school aged ring bearer.

In front of Deanna, in the seat beside Mary, Deanna's uncle Bobby is sniffling into a plaid handkerchief. She makes a mental note to tease him about it later, but by the time Jess starts walking down the aisle toward a starry-eyed Sam, Deanna herself a weepy mess.

“Shut up,” she whispers when she catches Castiel smiling at her, and wipes at her eyes. Castiel just smiles wider.

The entire production goes off without a hitch, and before Deanna knows it, she's being herded along to pose in more pictures than she thinks she's ever been in before.

“I'm not actually in the wedding party,” she reminds the photographer—a girl with a blonde pixie cut and a kind smile who Jess met at Stanford—but her reason is ignored.

“You're Sam's sister,” she says, pointing emphatically at the space to Sam's left where she wants Deanna to stand, and reluctantly, Deanna does as she's told. When it's officially time for the couple-only portion of the photo shoot, Deanna sighs in relief, heading over toward the marquee where the rest of the guests have already gathered for the reception.

Castiel is standing with Bobby, and from a distance Deanna can see that the two of them are in some kind of heated discussion.

“Crap,” she mutters to herself, and slows her pace, wondering what on earth they could be arguing about and how she's going to diffuse whatever it is. She's still got nothing when she gets close enough to catch Castiel's words.

“...just saying that calling him a hack would likely be an understatement.”

Bobby snorts.

  
“A _hack_?” he repeats, “the guy was a creep, I'll give you that. But his translation of The Goetia was brilliant.”

Castiel rolls her eyes.

“Do I need to break this up?” Deanna asks, and Bobby laughs aloud, shaking his head.

“Just a little healthy debate,” he says, and Castiel nods until he adds; “it's good to talk to someone who knows the classics for a change.”

“If you consider Aleister Crowley's _Goetia_ a classic, perhaps you and I will have a problem after all,” Castiel says flatly, and Bobby laughs again. Castiel smirks in reply.

“In that case, I'll stay out of it,” Deanna announces, and makes her way over to where a bar has been set up in the marquee, grabbing drinks for all three of them.

When the sun starts to sink out of view beyond the trees, the wedding party returns from their photo session, and the reception kicks off. The garden is open, lights dotting the branches of the aspen around the edge, and under the marquee the tables are arranged around a wide dance floor. There's a band playing to the side— _thank God the DJ canceled_ , Deanna thinks—and on a scale of Jon Lovitz in _The Wedding Singer_ to Adam Sandler in _The Wedding Singer_ , the frontman is coming in at around a... well. He's okay.

The champagne, on the other hand, is fantastic. Someone keeps filling Deanna's glass.

Deanna mingles, talking to a few of Sam's friends who she hasn't seen in a while, catching up with distant family members and people from Jess' side whose names she can hardly remember. Castiel sticks by her side for a while, then gets pulled into a few conversations on her own, leaving Deanna to talk with Jess' younger brother until his girlfriend drags him off to the dance floor.

Standing by the desserts table, humming along to _I've Just Seen A Face_ , Deanna steals a decorative strawberry and bites it in half. With a glance up she finds Castiel watching her from the opposite side of the room where she's been in a conversation about city apiaries, of all things, with one of Jess' uncles for about twenty minutes. She raises one eyebrow in silent judgment of Deanna's not-so-subtle sneaking of the strawberry, and Deanna grins before popping the rest of it into her mouth. Castiel's mouth ticks up to one side in an almost smile, and she shakes her head, looking back at the old man who's still talking her ear off. Deanna can't seem to stop staring at her.

“Selcouth,” Sam says suddenly from beside her, and Deanna nearly jumps out of her skin.

“What?”

“Castiel. She's not weird. She's _selcouth_.”

“We can't all be human dictionaries, college boy,” she says, shoving another strawberry into her mouth, and Sam rolls his eyes, slapping her hand away as she tries to take a third.

“I just mean, she's unique. You made it sound like she'd stick straws on her teeth and pretend to be a walrus or something.”

“How the fuck did you get that impression?”

“ _Deanna_ ,” Mary's voice cuts in sharply, and Deanna looks over to see her mother sitting at a nearby table, casting an unimpressed look in her direction, “you know I don't care about the language, but Jess' grandmother is here.”

“Sorry, Mom,” she says, and shoves Sam when he snorts at her, “shut up, Sam.”

“You can't tell me to shut up. It's my wedding.”

“I'm still older.”

“Right.”

“Anyway, weird is definitely a better word for her,” Deanna says, looking back over at Castiel, “she's like... a martial artist who bakes and plays the saxophone and has nine different books about beekeeping even though she's never kept a bee in her life. _Weird_ is better. Weird fits.”

Sam raises his eyebrows.

“What else?”

“What else is weird about her?” she asks, and Sam nods, “I don't know. She drives a fu—” Deanna glances at Mary and corrects herself, “a freakin' pimp car, Sammy. And she fences and speaks at least three languages that I know about and she eats ice-cream cones _from the base first_. Like, who _does_ that? And she—what are you laughing at?”

Sam is grinning ear to ear, like he's up to something, and Deanna frowns at him.

“You have a thing for her,” he announces, far too loud.

“ _Shut up_ ,” Deanna hisses, and flushes bright red despite herself. Involuntarily, her eyes flick over to where Castiel is making some kind of gesture at Jess' uncle that looks a lot like some form of sign language for someone being attacked by a swarm of bees. She looks like a complete idiot. Deanna's heart swells. She can't fight back the smile.

“Oh my god, you have a _massive_ thing for her,” Sam laughs, and Deanna shrinks down as if she thinks she might be able to fade into the scenery if she tries hard enough.

Pulling her over toward the edge of the marquee, Sam ducks his head down, talking more quietly.

“Does she know?”

“No.”

“Are you going to tell her?”

“Are you insane? I'm her boss, Sam. She's living with me. It's a clusterfuck of a situation already.”

“But you guys are like... I don't know. You _fit_ , Dee. I've never seen you like this with anyone.”

“Doesn't change anything,” Deanna says.

Sam frowns to himself for a moment, looking back over at Castiel, and then returns his gaze to Deanna.

“I think you should tell her,” he says finally, as though it's just that simple,

“Yeah, well that's easy for you to say,” she tells him, “you're all high on wedding endorphins.”

Before Sam can say anything else, Deanna turns, excusing herself to the bathroom. It might not be her proudest moment, running away, but it's better than hearing someone confirm what she already knows. She and Castiel would be perfect together.

It hurts more than she wants to think about.

 

* * *

 

The trouble with bringing someone to a wedding is that there's an endless supply of distant and well-meaning relatives who all get it into their heads that you're a couple. If Deanna has to tell one more person that, no, she and Castiel aren't dating, she thinks she's going to die. It's almost enough to make her wish she wasn't out to everyone and their mother. At least that way she'd only have to endure questions about why she hadn't brought a boyfriend along.

“You doing okay, honey?” Mary asks, sitting down in the seat beside her, and Deanna looks up from the uneaten slice of wedding cake on her plate.

“I'm good.”

Mary gives her a dubious frown, and Deanna shrugs it off.

“Really,” she says, “just kinda tired.”

It takes a little while, but Mary eventually accepts the lie and looks back out over the dance floor, leaning over to link her arm through Deanna's.

“I wish your dad were here to see this,” she says after a moment, “he'd have loved Jess.”

“Yeah.”

Smiling, Mary nudges Deanna and drops her voice.

“Cas, too.”

“Mom—”

“I know, I know, you're just friends. But I overheard you talking to your brother,” Mary tells her, and Deanna's denial dies on her tongue. She slumps a little in her seat.

“She's my employee, Mom.”

“She's also sharing your apartment,” Mary points out, and the way she says it makes it seem like that's a good thing, “I think the conflict of interest ship has well and truly sailed.”

Side-eying her mother, Deanna furrows her brow.

“Shouldn't you be telling me to be sensible?” she asks, and Mary smiles.

“I'd rather you were happy than sensible, sweetheart.”

Pushing her cake around the plate with her fork, Deanna makes no response, and Mary nudges her side again.

“For what it's worth, I get the impression that she—”

“Dee!”

They both turn to see Sam, beaming and rumpled as he barrels toward them. He catches hold of Deanna's arm and drags her to her feet, and whatever Mary was going to say is cut short.

“You have to dance,” Sam says, grinning, and Deanna casts a desperate glance toward her mother, who stands, laughing as she backs away.

“You're on your own,” she teases, “if he makes you dance then I won't have to.”

“Thanks a lot, Mom,” Deanna says, and tries to wriggle her arm free, “forget it, Sammy.”

“Please, it's my wedding. You have to,” Sam's free hand lands heavily on her shoulder, and he looks at her seriously, “Jess will cry, Dee.”

Looking over to where Jess is twisting happily with her bridesmaids, completely oblivious to Sam's attempts at getting Deanna out onto the floor, Deanna raises her brow.

“Jess doesn't care if I dance.”

Sam juts out his lower lip and Deanna sighs. If there's one thing she's never quite been able to resist, it's that face. She hates it.

“Ughhh,” she groans, “fine. _One_ song.”

He beams.

“But just so you know,” she says, getting dragged onto the dance floor by her thoroughly champagne-soaked brother, “the _but it's my wedding_ thing has officially been tapped out.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Don't just say _yeah, okay_ ,” Deanna tells him, “I'm serious.”

“Yeah,” Sam laughs, “okay.”

Deanna doesn't get a chance to say anything else before he lifts her off her feet, and she glares at him as he spins them around amidst the mortifying flash of a hundred disposable cameras. People are laughing. Deanna silently thanks the store clerk who helped her find a dress fitted enough not to flare out.

“You're a giant pain in the ass,” she shouts over the wedding band's rendition of Queen's _I Want To Break Free_ , and Sam cackles, “I'd feel sorry for Jess, but she knew full well what she was getting herself into.”

Sam spins faster, laughing, and Deanna glares down at him.

“I hate you,” she tells him.

“You love me,” he cries, and turns faster.

The room tilts, blurs, and Deanna's head spins. It gives her an idea.

“I'm gonna barf,” she says.

“She does look a little green,” Castiel says from somewhere to Deanna's left, and Sam stops spinning immediately. He lowers her to the ground. Once she's free, she winks at him.

“Psych,” she says, but before Sam has a chance to catch hold of her again, Castiel grabs on to her hand.

“My turn,” Castiel tells him, and tilts her chin toward where Jess is standing, watching the scene play out with a smile on her face, “go dance with your wife.”

Sam's eyes light up at the W word, and Deanna laughs before she realizes that Castiel's hand is still wrapped around hers, and she's being pulled into the middle of the dance floor.

“Wait, Cas,” she says, “I don't—”

“You do dance,” Castiel cuts her off, turning to face her fully, “I've seen you.”

“When?”

“When you're cooking. You do _this_ —“ Castiel's hands land on Deanna's hips and she pushes, making them swing from side to side, “and I'm positive I saw you do a little turn while you were making pie crusts on Tuesday.”

“That's different,” Deanna argues, and Castiel raises her brow, “it's just for fun. This is—”

“Fun,” Castiel cuts her off, “Isn't it?”

 _It's definitely something_ , Deanna thinks.

Without her permission, her hands have situated themselves on Castiel's shoulders, and she thinks maybe the plan had been to push her away. She really doesn't want to.

They're swaying to the music, dancing already, and Deanna doesn't know where to look. All she does know is that she can feel Castiel's skin beneath her fingertips, the soft lace of her dress, and she's _close_. Too close. Not close enough.

“Besides,” Castiel says, mouth lifting at one side as she speaks in a voice most people reserve for puns, “what kind of wedding date would I be if I didn't insist we dance?”

“This isn't a date, Cas,” Deanna says, and hates how it sounds. She tries to convince herself she's imagining the disappointment on Castiel's face. She's not that good a liar.

“Well,” Castiel says after a moment, “hypothetically speaking, if it were, would you dance with me then?”

Deanna's mouth has gone dry.

“Yeah,” she admits.

“So let's just pretend for a while,” Castiel says.

Deanna gulps. She nods.

“Okay.”

Satisfied, Castiel smiles and tightens her hold on Deanna's hips; Deanna tries not to focus too much on the feel of her hands, on the way her fingertips press against her.

They've been dancing a few minutes when the song changes to something that vaguely registers in Deanna's mind as _Unchained Melody_ , and for some damn reason she can't seem to look away from Castiel's eyes. On some level, she's aware that now would be a good time to bail. They danced to all of _Brown Eyed Girl_ , after all, and a new song is as good an excuse as any to leave the dance floor. She's trying to work herself up to doing just that when Castiel's expression falters, her eyes dropping away from Deanna's as she takes deep breath.

“Deanna,” she says, then shakes her head slightly, “Dee. Can I speak to you about something?”

“Sure,” Deanna says.

Castiel's eyes dart around, settling on the dark garden beyond the marquee.

“Outside?”

Warily, Deanna nods, and Castiel steps back, taking her hands and their warmth away. Deanna follows as she weaves through the dancers, walking out into the night.

Outside in the garden, the cool air smells of flowers, sweet and soft. Deanna can hear people starting to sing along to the Righteous Brothers song with varying levels of skill and lyrical accuracy, and she laughs when she hears Bobby's voice among them.

“Wow,” she says, turning to face Castiel, “Bobby's got some pipes. Wonder if he...”

Deanna trails off.

Castiel is chewing her lip, staring at her as though she's looking for something, and against all her better judgment Deanna feels compelled to help her find it. Without thinking, she leans forward. She's far too close when Castiel speaks, only a few inches between them, close enough that Deanna feels Castiel's breath against her lips.

“I quit,” Castiel says, and Deanna backs up so fast she nearly stumbles into the garden. She feels all the color drain from her face, her heart pounding, telling her to run.

“Oh my god,” Deanna croaks, “I'm sorry. _Shit_. I didn't—I shouldn't have—”

“Do you accept my resignation?”

Gulping, Deanna nods weakly, bringing up a hand to cover her eyes. Her fingers are trembling. The words _I fucked up, I fucked up_ , are drumming relentlessly in her head, loud as her pulse.

“Yeah,” she says, her voice catching, “if that's... if that's what you want. Shit. _Shit_ , Cas I didn't—”

“Effective immediately,” Castiel clarifies.

Deanna blinks, feeling a little like she might keel over, but Castiel appears to be waiting for a response so she nods.

“Yeah,” she agrees, “effective immediately.”

For some reason, Castiel smiles, eyes bright as they were this morning when she told Deanna her dress looked okay.

“Good,” she says, and without a pause she reaches out, grasping Deanna's waist and pulling her back to where she was, closing the distance between them. With her chin tilted a little to the side, she brings her hand up to cup Deanna's cheek, and kisses Deanna like no-one ever has, carefully, slowly. Like she's something important.

Her lips are soft, sweet with the taste of champagne and strawberries, and when she finally moves back, Deanna chases after her, seeking more. Castiel lets her.

“I've regretted taking that job since the second the interview was over,” she whispers into the scant space between them when Deanna pauses for breath, “because I realized we couldn't do this.”

She leans back in, pressing her lips to Deanna's as if to clarify her words, but it has the opposite effect. The second they touch, Deanna completely forgets what she said, and kisses her back, lost completely in the taste of Castiel's mouth, the feeling of her lips, her fingertips trailing soft over her cheek, in her hair. Suddenly, though, it clicks. Deanna jerks her head away.

“Wait,” she says, holding up her hand and staring at Castiel incredulously, “did you seriously just quit so we could make out?”

Castiel chews her lip as she raises one shoulder.

“Perhaps.”

Deanna stares at her. Blinks a few times.

“Can I rehire you?” she asks, and Castiel grins.

“I don't see why not,” she says, “though perhaps we should wait until after.”

Nodding, Deanna reaches out, tucking a long curl back behind Castiel's ear, then pauses. Frowns.

“After what?” she asks.

Castiel raises an eyebrow. Deanna's chest seizes up.

“Oh,” Deanna breathes, and feels Castiel's fingers interlocking with hers where they still rest in her hair. She tugs gently, bringing Deanna's palm to her lips before letting her hand drop down, leaning in to kiss Deanna's lips again. “That's... that's probably a good idea.”

 

* * *

 

It's a few minutes later when they make their way back through the reception side by side, and as they pointedly avoid the other guests, slipping between tables and across the lawn, Deanna watches the way Castiel keeps glancing at her like she has a secret. Her skin is flushed. Deanna's heart thunders.

When they arrive back at the main house, the sounds of the party slowly fading behind them, Castiel moves to walk around to the front door. Deanna catches her by the elbow.

“Shortcut,” she says, and pulls Castiel through the side door into the kitchen. It's cool inside, and dark, and she feels the flesh of Castiel's arm raising in goosebumps beneath her fingertips. She lets her thumb slide down the inside of her forearm, grazing her palm, before pulling her hand away and pushing the door wide, stepping into the bright hallway. The staircase affords a number of interesting possibilities for kissing—hard up against the railing, leaning down to capture Castiel's lips from the next step, pressed into the corner where the light is dim and the wall is cool through the thin fabric of Deanna's dress—and it takes them almost five minutes to ascend to the third floor.

Their room, when they finally reach it, still bears the signs of this morning's departure. Deanna trips on her hastily discarded shoes as they walk in.

By the time she's kicked them out of harms way, Castiel is in the middle of the room, fumbling uselessly at that stubborn pearl button at the back of her dress.

It's exactly like this morning, only this time she'll be able to take her time. After closing the door firmly, she crosses the room in three easy strides and gently pushes Castiel's hands away to take over.

The button comes free easily, and when the tip of her index finger slides against the nape of Castiel's neck, softly, softly, Castiel sighs.

With a low swoop in her stomach, Deanna ducks her head to press her lips to the exposed skin, and is rewarded with another.

Slowly, she moves to the next button, stepping closer, closer, close enough to feel the silk-warmth of Castiel's body, and when the last one slips free she slides her palms over Castiel's shoulders, down to her hands. Castiel catches them as though she was waiting, turning her head to look back over her shoulder.

 _She's incredible_ , Deanna thinks, and drops one hand to pull Castiel around without a further thought, catching her mouth to taste the sugar of her lips, the berry-sweet of her tongue.

Castiel opens to her, pressing close.

Deanna's fingers are tangled in Castiel's unruly hair, her lips ghosting over her cheek, her brow, her earlobe. All she hears are the sighs of the woman pressed against her; all she sees are blue eyes and tan skin and pink lips parted.

Reaching up to slip Castiel's dress down over her shoulders, Deanna's fingertips brush lightly over her throat, and Castiel exhales slowly as she shrugs out of it, letting it drop to the floor, a pool of blue around her feet. Castiel's stomach is soft and warm beneath Deanna's hands, but it quivers, trembles against her fingertips.

“Is this okay?” Deanna asks her, and Castiel nods, restless, tugging Deanna's dress up, up, and finally over her head. She throws it in the vague direction of the daybed.

“I think,” she says, trailing her hands over Deanna's bare stomach, up to skim over the black lace of her bra, “that _okay_ might not be a strong enough word.”

They kiss again, and it's slower, deeper. Castiel walks backwards to the bed, and Deanna follows, never breaking away until Castiel's knees hit the mattress and she slides back toward the pillows.

Deanna watches her with rapt attention, the way the yellow moonlight glints off her skin, the flush creeping down the hollow of her throat and further, disappearing under blue satin.

Music filters in through the window from the marquee, the slow rhythm of _Superstition_ , and Deanna crawls up the bed, bracing herself over Castiel as she leans down to kiss her. She sighs when Deanna's teeth tease at her bottom lip, full and soft, so Deanna does it again, again, as Castiel's fingertips stroke through her hair, down her neck, her shoulder, her side. Her touch is featherlight. Thoughtful.

Deanna pulls back, moving Castiel's perpetually messy hair out of her face, and just looks at her. Takes in the kiss-swollen lips and those eyes that have captivated her since day one.

“What is it?” Castiel asks, staring up at her, and Deanna shrugs as best she can from where she's leaning.

“You're kind of gorgeous.”

“Kind of?”

“Eh,” Deanna says, her mouth lifting at one side, and Castiel's eyes narrow.

“You're going to pay for that,” she says haughtily, and before Deanna knows it she's on her back, Castiel sitting firmly on her hips and frowning down at her. Deanna bites her lip, dragging her palms up over Castiel's thighs and squeezing, thumbs stopping just short of her underwear.

“Isn't there some kind of rule about using your crazy aikido training outside of the dojo?”

Castiel shrugs, the action pressing her weight down against Deanna, who lets out a small moan at the friction.

“Probably.”

“Alright then,” Deanna laughs, pushing up onto one elbow, “just making sure.”

With her free hand, Deanna trails her fingers up over Castiel's stomach, teasing at the satiny blue fabric of her bra. Castiel sits up a little straighter and undoes the clasp at the back without preamble, shrugging it off and flinging it blindly across the room before she leans right back down to kiss Deanna again.

Soon enough, there's nothing separating them, and all Deanna knows is warm skin and heavy breath, the press and restless roll of hips. She touches Castiel everywhere, bites and sucks and laps at the crease beneath her breasts, closes her teeth around her right nipple, presses her lips to the freckle above it.

When she feels Castiel's hand snaking down, skirting her, catching the slick warmth of her arousal, she reaches out mindlessly, pulling her into a kiss that quickly turns into nothing but shared breath as Castiel's hand slides further, fingers as deft as Deanna imagined. Deanna lets out a fractured moan against her lips.

“Cas,” she murmurs, “ _god_ , I'm so glad you quit.”

Instead of replying, Castiel just hums and dips two fingers into her, deep enough to have her writhing, shallow enough that Deanna's freckled hips push upward, seeking more. Without pause Castiel gives it to her, pressing deeper as she moves to settle between her thighs.

“I wanted you,” Castiel tells her, matter of fact, as if she weren't currently working Deanna toward what she's certain is going to be one of the most intense orgasms she's ever experienced, “since that first day.”

Castiel's thumb settles against her, rubbing in slow circles as her fingers slip-slide, and Deanna struggles to think, let alone reply.

“I thought of kissing you,” she says, looking up to catch Deanna's eyes, “of pressing you against the wall in the apartment and trying my luck.”

“Wish you had,” Deanna manages to reply, and Castiel smiles at her again, sliding her free hand under Deanna's knee, pushing lightly until it bends.

“Thought about it a lot,” Castiel goes on, redirecting her focus to where she's working her fingers, “about touching you. Tasting you.”

As if to prove it, she ducks her head down, exchanging her thumb for her lips, and Deanna groans, her back arching with the cool slide of Castiel's tongue as it darts out to tease at her. She's not shy about it. Every flick and suck is deliberate, purposeful, and when she pulls back slightly to look up at Deanna, she makes a satisfied sound low in her throat. Licks her lips.

“I could do this all night,” she says, and leans back down.

Deanna loses herself in a flurry of sensation, in Castiel's mouth where it works her slow, in her long hair brushing against Deanna's thighs, in her free hand that's wandered up to link with Deanna's own, holding on tight and keeping her from floating away.

“Fu— _ahh_ ,” Deanna bucks up from the bed, hands bunching in the sheets, body clenching around Castiel's fingers that press deeper still, curling inside her over and over until Deanna's thighs start to shake, her neck arches back, mouth slack, panting. When Castiel hums against her, setting off vibrations under her skin, it's a sensory overload that Deanna can barely understand, and her body tenses as she comes, throat closing up around a cry that might have bothered the neighbors were there anyone in the room next door right now.

When she comes back down, there's something that feels a whole lot like it could be love pounding hard in her chest, and she stares at Castiel as she crawls back up the bed to kiss her.

“Will you tell me what the symbol is, now?” Castiel asks, voice a quiet slur as she pulls away to trace her fingertips lightly over the tattoo on Deanna's breast, and Deanna starts laughing, her whole body tingling with the afterglow.

“Sure,” she says finally, kissing Castiel's cheek, moving along her jaw and down her neck, rolling until Castiel is beneath her and making her way down to her collarbone, “after.”

“After?” Castiel asks, and Deanna looks up, arching her brow until Castiel seems to remember. “ _Oh_ ,” She bites her lip and smiles, “yes, I think I can wait.”


End file.
